Thanks for participating in our message center! I hope that you enjoy your time here and learn a lot. Here are some guidelines for posting messages.
The purpose of the message center is for court reporting students, reporters, scopists, and anyone else interested in stenography to exchange ideas, tips, encouragement, companionship, etc.
When you post a message, you have the option of including your e-mail address. If you do that, you will be automatically notified when someone posts a response to your message, and it will be easier for people to contact you directly if they want to. If you don't want to include your e-mail address, you can simply omit filling in that blank.
Leaving the subject line blank will result in the previous subject line being carried over to your post.
The message board does not automatically quote the previous message. If you want to refer to someone else's text, you can use the back button of your browser to go back to the message you want to reply to, "copy" the text you want to refer to, use the forward button to go back to your reply post, and "paste" the text you've selected. (Assuming that this is compatible with your computer system.)
Don't be afraid of starting a new thread. Most people spend most of their time scanning the first page, and the format of the discussion area can make it difficult to see new follow-ups if there are already a lot of messages posted to a thread.
Messages are posted directly to the board; they are not filtered through me first.
Discussion of ideas is great! Personal attacks are not. Please refrain from flaming (insulting people or issuing personal attacks).
If you feel that you have been flamed -- please do not respond in kind. Sometimes it is difficult to discern meaning; if you're not sure what someone meant, ask for clarification. If you believe they are flaming you, it's still best to respond calmly -- if you're wrong about the flaming, you'll have kept the peace, and if you're right about it, nothing will get their goat more than not getting a rise out of you! <G>
Usually you have the option to respond via e-mail. If a discussion seems like it's degenerating, taking it to e-mail can be a good way to reduce posturing.
Posting in all caps is considered to be "shouting" on the internet. (An isolated word in all caps is considered emphasis).
Because we cannot hear inflections on the internet, sometimes people will add additional signals to show emotional overtones. A common format is "emoticons" -- cartoon representations of emotion, such as a smiley-face [ :) ]; a winking face [ ;) ], or a frowning face [ :( ] . Another way is by putting words or letters in pointy brackets; for example, the letter "G" in pointy brackets usually means the person is grinning (as in my remarks a paragraphs up).
Vendors are asked to limit their advertising posts to no more than once a month. They are welcome to participate in discussions with substantive comments at all times.
Any thread which has not had a post within the past four months is subject to removal, although it may not be removed at exactly the four-month anniversary. Any post to a thread within the past four months will preserve the entire thread. This is designed to keep conversation current and interesting, and to prevent current responses to threads from being buried beneath pages of other threads.
In order not to lose the wisdom of the site, particularly informative posts in threads scheduled for deletion will, with permission of the authors, be archived in a "Best Answered Questions" page. If permission is not granted, then the posts will be deleted with the rest of the thread.
When push comes to shove, I can and will act as a moderator. I have five solid years of net experience, and most people think that I'm pretty reasonable. If I ask you to do something, please accord my request a great degree of respect.
If I see a duplicate post, I'll try to delete it. The discussion board sometimes hiccups. Don't worry about posting apology, but if you drop me a personal e-mail about it, it'll make sure I'm aware of it.
If you have posted something that you would like to change, send me an e-mail and I will change it for you if there have not been any responses to your message.
If you've posted something you regret and there has been a response, please contact me and we'll figure out editing options.
At any point, a post can be withdrawn upon the author's request. If responses have been posted, the place where the post was originally located will have a notation of "post withdrawn at author's request", to indicate that the subsequent posts had a context. Otherwise, the post will be withdrawn without further comment.
If a discussion seems to be degenerating, I might step in if I think it will help. I might contact individuals directly. But it's preferable for people to work things out on their own, and I'd like to see that happen as much as possible. Please respect my judgment on these matters.
Blatant spam is subject to deletion without notice, as are racist, homophobic, etc. remarks. These determinations are made by the moderator.
Sometimes people want to share tapes with one another. Bear in mind that it is illegal to make copies of copyright material to share with another person, whether or not you charge for those copies. Any posts offering to provide copyright material will be deleted without notice. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine what is copyright material. To avoid even the appearance of impropriety, I ask that if you do not know that you have the permission of the person who created the material that you treat it with at least the protection granted to copyright material. If there is any chance that the material could be considered copyright, do not post a message offering to copy it for someone else, whether or not you want to charge for this.
This is not to say that you can never offer to make tapes for other people. If you've made a tape of yourself, that's fine to share. If you've taped a dictation from class and your teachers don't mind your making copies, that would also be great to share. Please get the permission of the parties involved before offering to distribute tapes. Your post offering to share this material should include source information to show that it is available for distribution.
You can also, of course, trade or sell original material under copyright, just as you could trade or sell books that you've bought from a bookstore.
Because court reporting students love tapes, the above paragraphs referred to sharing tapes. But the same concepts apply to all copyright material -- TV programs, books, software, etc.
Postings of the parties reflect their opinions, and do not reflect the opinions of the Court Reporting Students' Online Support Center (to the extent it can have any) or me. Posts known to violate the above guidelines are subject to deletion.
Decisions of the moderator are open to debate, but are ultimately final.
These rules are a work in progress, so please feel free to share your thoughts on them with me.
Thanks for reading these guidelines. You can continue to the message boards or go to the front page of the Court Reporting Students' Online Support Center.
Last Revised December 5, 1998. Please send any comments to allegria@his.com .