Table of Contents

1. Background
2. How to Join
3. How to Participate
4. List Archive
5. Topics for Discussion
6. Topics Not Open for Discussion
7. Questionable Messages
8. Technical Details
9. List Administration
10. Disclaimer

Welcome. This is the information page for the Gaithersburg List, a mailing list created to provide a forum for the citizens of Gaithersburg, Maryland to discuss matters of interest to the local community. The initial members of this mailing list are expected to be residents of the central historic districts of Gaithersburg and the surrounding area, generally referred to as Olde Towne Gaithersburg. However, list membership and discussion is not limited to this area, and anyone with a personal interest in the Gaithersburg community is welcome to join and participate.

Mail sent to the list address by non-subscribers will be placed in a hold queue, rather than being rejected outright. If deemed appropriate, the list administrators may allow the posting out to the list.

This list works by e-mail. All you do to post to the entire group of subscribers is send e-mail to oldetowne@gaithersburg-list.net and everyone will get a copy of it. Likewise, you will automatically receive all messages sent by others to the group. You can even set up your mail program to put all these messages into a separate folder so you can browse them more easily.

An archive of this mailing list is available here. This archive is automatically maintained, but old messages have not yet been imported.

Topics that we consider to be appropriate for this list include:

• Home ownership issues. Discussion of sources for materials and services. Restoration techniques. Experiences, good or bad, with contractors. How-to questions. Relative merits of brands and models of appliances and parts. Landscaping and gardening questions. "Has anybody ever used...", "Does anyone know how to...", "Does anyone know where to get..." type questions.
• Traffic, and ideas about how to improve the traffic situation. I would hope that this mailing list would be a place where ideas can be hammered out before they are suggested to the City government at forums such as the design charrettes occasionally run by the them.
• Events, both good and bad. I'm sure that we'd all like to know if, for example, someone's car was broken into on Brookes Ave. But happier things, such as announcements of block parties, yard sales and school events are also OK, although direct advertisements of items or services for sale are not.
• Fact-based political issues and personal opinion. It is OK to say "Personally, I think that the city should...", or even to announce "I support ____ for mayor". It is OK to say "____ voted against adding a new park" as long as it is true. But we need to be careful to not go much beyond this. "____ is a racist", for example, is clearly over the edge. See restrictions below. It is also entirely OK, and in fact encouraged, for local politicians and City staff to subscribe to this list so that they may respond to statements made here.
• Limited, commercial responses to questions raised on this list are OK. This means, if someone asks where they can get a type A-13 widget for their house, and another list member happens to sell type A-13 widgets at their shop up by the Airpark, it is entirely OK to say so, and even mention how much you want for one. Similarly, if someone complains about a local business, it is entirely OK and in fact encouraged for the local business to respond to these complaints. But this list is not intended to be a free advertising medium.
• We welcome churches in our community and church members and officials are encouraged to join the list. The needs and concerns of church organizations as community members and property owners are suitable for discussion. However, this list is not intended as a medium for discussion of religion specifically.

Any list member who persists in sending inappropriate messages to the list will lose posting rights. Topics considered inappropriate for this list include:

• Spam. Any form of unsolicited advertising, chain letters, work-from-home schemes, etc. are explicitly not allowed on this list. Note that this is in contrast to commercial responses to questions from list members, which would not be considered unsolicited.
• Libel, defamation, name-calling and ad hominem attacks or responses. Maintaining a strong sense of civility is essential to a list like this. Be nice, be patient, be understanding.
• Gossip, rumor and and hearsay. This is not a place to report who was seen with whom and who reportedly said what at which party.
• Religious discourse, however restrained or civil. However appropriate it may seem to a particular discussion, this is just not the purpose of this list and will not be allowed. In much the same way as commercial advertising is disallowed, this list is not an avenue for religious proselytizing or evangelizing.
• Obscenities, scatological or ethnic humor, etc. Words that are or are intended to be hurtful, harmful or inflammatory. Again, please just be nice.
• Statements of hatred or even intense dislike. Threats or scares. Generalizations about the behavior, opinions or preferences of people based on race, religion, color, etc.
• Copies of prepared rhetoric or dogma, as from political or religious groups.

While not explicitly prohibited, there are also some sorts of messages that tend to cause controversy on mailing lists and thus are strongly discouraged. Do these things at your own risk -- and expect people to complain:

• Copies of entire articles. It is one thing to excerpt a paragraph or two to make a point, but if you would like other people to read an article, please just send a link or a reference. If there is no online source for a document and you have the right to distribute it, send an electronic copy to Bob Drzyzgula and I may be able to post it on the Gaithersburg List Home Page.
• Messages not directly relevant to the Gaithersburg community. Thus, please refrain from posting "cool web pages", humor for the sake of humor, etc. If you do want to post a link to a web page, please explain why you are posting this and what you think about it yourself.
• Quoting entire previous posts. While it is encouraged to quote enough of a message to make it clear what you are responding to, please don't just copy the entire message and add a comment or two. Everyone else saw the message already, or if they missed it, we're sure that someone will be happy to send them a copy individually.
• Sending HTML-formatted messages. Users of Microsoft Outlook or other mailers that can generate "rich text" messages should set their mailers to send only text to this list. It is fair to ask for help from the list in how to do this for your specific mailer.
• Sending your message content as attachments in a proprietary format such as Microsoft Word or Excel. There are list members (and list administrators :-) who use non-Microsoft operating systems and who thus may not be able to read these files. If all the interesting parts of your message are in a proprietary format, you should not expect that everyone will read it.
• Profanity.
• Statewide or national political discussions. This list is intended to discuss local issues. While, yes, "all politics are local", some are more local than others. We wish to draw the line somewhere, and we've decided to draw it between the County and the State. Montgomery County issues are OK, although marginal. This kind of topic is, however likely to be acceptable to the members of the list when statewide topics are of central importance to strongly local issues. For example, discussions of state or federal subsidies for historic preservation and state-funded improvements to city streets are likely to be welcome.

• Bob has contracted for a DSL line coming into his home. On a computer connected to the net through this line, a list processing program called "Mailman" has been configured to serve the address oldetowne@gaithersburg-list.net. When mail is sent to that address, the list processor starts a process that looks up the list of subscribed addresses. It then sends a copy of the message to each address in the list. This means that each list member should have a copy of the message in their inbox within a few minutes, assuming everyone's servers are working correctly.
• Only list members are allowed to post to the list. Once upon a time, it was possible to have open-post lists that allowed non-subscribers to post messages to the list. Unfortunately, with the growing prevalence of unsolicited email, or "spam", any open list is likely to have a fair amount of inappropriate content. Messages sent from non-subscribers will be placed in a hold queue, and notice will be sent to the list administrators (Bob Drzyzgula and Ed Richley). If deemed appropriate, either Ed or Bob will allow it out onto the list.
• List members who need to be able to post from multiple addresses (e.g. work and home) may request a listing in a special "post-only" list. The list software will accept posts from the post-only addresses, but will not send copies of the mail to those addresses. Thus, you can post from multiple addresses while only receiving a single copy.
• Persons wanting to subscribe need to browse to a web page and fill out a form. For more on this, see the section How to Join.
• Instructions on how to unsubscribe from the list are included in every post coming from the list, and may also be found on the list's web page. Unsubscribes do (or at least should) happen automatically, There is no automatic mechanism for being removed from the post-only list -- please note if you have a post-only address when you ask to unsubscribe your main address.
• Persons changing their email address must unsubscribe and and then subscribe under the new address.

The Gaithersburg List has no direct connection to the Government of the City of Gaithersburg. This list is not sponsored, sanctioned, approved or, as far as we know, disapproved of by the Government of the City of Gaithersburg. This list and this web page are run completely as a voluntary effort by the list administrators.

Although the list administrators have made an effort to set guidelines that will substantially reduce the chance for offensive or harmful content, the fact is that this list IS NOT MODERATED. We have no ability and make no attempt to prevent people from posting inappropriate content. Thus, the list administrators cannot be held responsible for the content carried on this list. While we will, in certain circumstances, remove abusive posters from the list, this can be done only after the fact. List members subscribe only at their own risk that they may receive inappropriate messages.

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