Forestry Focus

This list is moderated, which means that a volunteer group of Society of American Foresters' (SAF) members screens all messages prior to posting them to the entire group. By screening messages, it ensures that they adhere to the rules, guidelines, and moderation processes are followed.

To subscribe to Forestry Focus, simply send an e-mail message to Steve Wilent at swilent@earthlink.net. You will then receive a welcome message with details about how to post messages.

List Rules

Flaming is prohibited. A flame is when you call someone names, are overtly rude, or are blatantly sarcastic or condescending. Anything worth saying can, and must, be stated in polite terms. Comments that are intended only to enrage the recipient rather than contribute to thoughtful discussion are prohibited.

Profanity and vulgarity is prohibited.

Advertisements are prohibited.

Spam and sales pitches are not allowed. (We understand that those of you using free email—like Juno and Hot Mail—can't get around your messages having a Juno or Hot Mail footer. That's ok.)

Publicizing items of potential interest to list members, such as new releases of software packages, publications, conferences etc. is permissible and encouraged.

Do not post off-topic. Messages may address any broad forestry or natural resources related issues, and the moderators will give considerable leeway.

Virus warnings are strongly discouraged.

Posting of copyrighted material. According to U.S. copyright law, posting copyrighted material on the SAF listserver is legal, if it is intended for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. This includes whole articles or portions of articles. Whenever you post such material, cite the title of the work, author, source (name of newspaper, magazine, book title, website, or other source), publication date, and website address where the material may be found (if available). For long articles, it's best to include only brief excerpts in listserv messages, accompanied by information about how to locate the full text.

Anonymous messages will not be forwarded to the list. If there is a compelling reason why your identity should be withheld then you should present your case to the moderator.

Protect yourself and others against computer viruses. Files attached to messages, such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or any other file that you can open and run, may carry viruses. Such infected files can be spread through listservers or by ordinary e-mail messages. To prevent your computer from becoming infected, it's a good practice to have virus detection software installed on your computer and to delete, without opening, any files from unknown or untrustworthy sources.

Format Guidelines

The preferred format for list messages is plain text. Subscribers whose mail clients default to other formats such as HTML should configure them to send plain text when posting to the list. Sending MIME file attachments of any kind is discouraged because subscribers with plain text mail cannot read them.

Limit the total size of your message to 10k.

Limit your signature file to 8 lines or less.

To make it easier for all who read the posts, cut out all of the original post except the few sentences that you are replying to. Also, note who originally said what when quoting.

Put a descriptive subject on your original message. Title your response to be Re: followed by the subject of the actual message to which you are responding. When replying to a digest post, change the subject line in your message.

Content Guidelines

Say something substantial. Simply saying "I agree" (in so many words) or "I disagree" (in so many words) does not meet this guideline.

Say something new. Mere redundancy will not convince an opponent of their error.

Just because you "get in the last word" doesn't mean you won the argument.

If you have a business connection to a product or service mentioned in your post, this should be clear to anyone reading the message.

Moderation Process

Violation of a Rule will result in the message being omitted from the list, and the poster will be issued a warning.

Excessive or flagrant violation of the Guidelines may result in issuance of a warning.

After two warnings, violators will be removed from the list without notice.

If several messages are returned to the listserver for whatever reason (full mailbox, server problems, etc.), the member will be unsubscribed without warning.

To unsubscribe from Forestry Focus, send a blank message to leave-forestry-focus-2225474Q@email.sparklist.com .

For further information, or for help subscribing to the mailing list, contact Steve Wilent at swilent@earthlink.net or safweb@safnet.org.