Most people are already following these guidelines. To those people, I
thank you. For those of you who are not...please read carefully.
1. Please refrain from using words and phrases like URGENT, IMPORTANT,
MY WIFE WILL LEAVE ME IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND, etc, in the subject line
of your postings. Or even in the body of the message for that matter.
You may think that things which are URGENT, or IMPORTANT to you,
are just as urgent and important to everyone else reading this
list. You'd be surprised at just how wrong an assumption like
that can be. As a matter of fact, I personally tend to read
all such postings last and give them a low priority.
2. Please use meaningful subject lines. "Newbie Question",
is not meaningful what-so-ever.
3. Please provide necessary information, where applicable.
Statements like, "I recieve a NullPointerException when
using Castor, what's up with that?", are not very helpful,
add unnecessary traffic on the list, and will probably
never get an answer.
4. As a follow on to #3, when submitting examples, please try
to submit the smallest possible example which demonstrates
the problem. Short examples are easier to follow and will
get quicker responses from developers or other users than
long examples with lots of extraneous code/data.
4. Please read the documentation before posting. One of the
biggest problems is that there is not a lot of documentation
to Castor. At the same time, because it doesn't take long,
everyone should read what is written before posting.
5. Please check the mail archives before posting. Many questions
on this list have already been answered before. I am aware
that the current mail archive is not very good on a number
of issues (searching, reliability, etc). We are working
on these issues and hope to have a new archive system in
place shortly.
6. Please refrain from posting confidential information. Once an
e-mail is sent to the list, it goes out to all subscribers,
including archive engines. We cannot remove or delete messages
sent to the list. Once sent they are available for the public
to see. If you are unsure about what is confidential or not,
check with your manager, supervisor, or the person in charge
at your company.
7. Please be kind and respectful to your fellow castor users.
Remember, except for me, you were all newbies at one point.
8. If you are going on vacation. Please enjoy yourself. We
really want you to have fun and get some much needed
rest and relaxation. With that we being said and to be
perfectly honest none of us really want to receive your
automated vacation responses. So please either add a filter
to your vacation response so it doesn't get sent to the
list or users posting to the list, or simply remove yourself
from the list before you go, and add yourself back when
you return.