[game_edu] Ad Hoc committee

[Jay Laird]

To those of you who are net veterans and need not hear this, I  
apologize for this mini-lecture, but I hope this will help keep the
listserv discussions as productive as possible, and that it will keep  
people from leaving the list in frustration.

I've been biting my tongue for a while with the philosophy that we're  
all adults here and know how to conduct ourselves, and that the
occasional social gaffe can be attributed to someone who may be new to  
mailing lists.  However, as of late I've been noticing more and more  
irrelevant posting on this list, and I'd like to suggest a few things  
to consider before posting to this list:

1) Does the entire group benefit from your posting?

If you are making people aware of a resource that can help their  
programs or studies, or commenting on such a resource, or answering a  
question posed to the entire group on a subject, then the answer is  
probably YES.  There are even times where promoting your own work or  
program is perfectly valid, IF it benefits the group, and it's not  
just obvious self-promotion.

2) Does the entire group need to see your response to someone else's
posting?

Almost every email includes the original sender's return address in  
addition to the reply-to-group address.  Sure, it's easy to just hit
"reply"" and dash of a quick response, but this clogs up the list.  If  
you are responding to a question asked to the group which benefits the  
group (see point 1 above), then great.  However, if you are requesting  
more information from an individual on the list, or if you are
expressing interest in joining a committee or project someone has  
posted about on the list, please email that person directly instead!

3) Does your posting leave a good impression?

This third and final point is the one that many people seem to forget  
most in the age of email, but it is critical to keeping productive
listserv conversations going.  First, personal attacks certainly don't  
belong here, nor any form of public complaining that should be handled  
in private and even broad criticisms should be well-thought-out. Since  
this is a list about academia, I would hope everyone understands the  
idea of supporting ones' assertions.  However, even when there are  
moments that you just have to vent, please consider the effects on the  
rather broad audience that this list serves.

Remember, you are all representatives of your organizations, and the  
impressions you leave do matter.  I know of at least one student who  
removed a potential graduate program from his list of school choices  
on the basis of something he read on this list.  If we want our  
institutions to support our work in this exciting field, we need to  
make sure that our discussions of our work present our programs in the  
best possible light.

Jay
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