Hi Everyone I have had a few complaints recently and It is appreciated that complaints are coming to me and not cluttering up the list, but those people(or person) responsible for inciting unrest on list will, in future, be moderated without further warning. I have there asked Peter of the Upper Dales Family History Group if I may borrow his Netiquette Guide……which is very comprehensive and helpful to each and every one of us to use, you can of course have a look at the wonderful web site yourselves at (Upper Dales Family History Group) and its URL at http://www.upperdalesfhg.org.uk - I am certain we will all learn something from the guide. What is netiquette? Netiquette is the art of communicating on the Internet clearly and concisely but without causing offence. Some believe that the strength of emails is that they are spontaneous and you can have your say without the more formal style of a letter. But the very spontaneity of an email may cause offence if you inadvertently use an ill-considered phrase or a patronising attitude. I am sure we would all agree that offensive emails are almost unknown in our community. Quite the contrary - we are blessed with members who are anxious to please, to impart knowledge, to help new-comers to family history, and to learn from others no matter how experienced they are themselves. Many of you are acknowledged authorities in your genealogical field and yet we never read any evidence of 'talking down' to a less experienced member. You can all give yourselves a pat on the back for that! But we must correspond within guidelines To keep good order there are some topics and styles that we should steer clear of: • Modern-day party-political controversy • Contemporary religious debate • Messages which present personal details of living individuals • Defamatory comments about an individual or even a company in an age when libel and litigation lawsuits are becoming commonplace. • Messages which encourage illegal or copyright infringement • Messages which display text from other sources without the owner/author's permission. • You may not use our list to advertise your own products unless it is done in a restrained manner - for example, you might have produced a genealogical publication which has relevance to the main subject of your message • You may not use the newsgroup to blatantly advertise your own genealogical expertise. The content of your correspondence is all you need to establish your genealogical credentials. • 'Chain' letters • Virus warnings - they are usually hoaxes It is the Moderator's responsibility to ensure that we adhere to these rules and may delete messages containing such infringements. Here are some suggestions for you to follow when corresponding. • Please avoid long messages threads which involve non-family history topics. For example, questions about technical computer issues are perhaps best dealt with by email off-List unless the matter raised may be of general interest. • When you have a long explanation to present, try to break it into logical paragraphs. It is said that a page of text is easiest to understand when there are about 15 words per line. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee such a neat format in the recipient's computer screen but we can control our thoughts with the 'one thought per paragraph' idea they taught us at school! • Please have an eye on Confidentiality (see Guidelines, above). Please be cautious when referring to the identities of the living - phone numbers, addresses, etc. Avoid publicising mother's maiden names, for example, because they are often use as an ID in internet banking transactions. If this information is important then it might be more secure to communicate it to interested parties via a private email. • Try to choose a descriptive Subject for your email. Remember that the Subject title can be used as a search 'key' in the website's archive of messages (although the body of the message is also searched). But do remember that the clever allusion or pun can make an eye-catching title which draws the membership to your contribution. • If you wish to reply to an email but wish to introduce another topic consider the following: Subject title of the first email of a thread :  Landowners You want to drift on to the Briggs of Keighley (because they were Landowners). The Reply Subject should be in the form BRIGG of Keighley [local landowners]           Note use of square brackets.   • Remember to edit out any SPAM references in your reply. The word SPAM does appear occasionally in otherwise innocuous messages. If you do not take out the word SPAM, it will be perpetuated in subsequent messages of the thread. List admin Jan Perkins -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 5019 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.23.0/1379 - Release Date: 15/04/2008 18:10

From: "Jan Perkins" <janperkins@blueyonder.co.uk> > • Please have an eye on Confidentiality (see Guidelines, above). > Please be cautious when referring to the identities of the living - > phone numbers, addresses, etc. Avoid publicising mother's maiden > names, for example, because they are often use as an ID in internet > banking transactions. If this information is important then it might > be more secure to communicate it to interested parties via a private > email. > Please forgive me for mentioning this, Jan, but in my opinion anyone who is still using their mother's maiden name as a codeword for their bank or any other financial institution needs to examine their arrangements very closely. With the GRO Indexes on the Internet at several websites, freely accessible by the whole world, it is the simplest thing imaginable to discover the mother's maiden name of virtually anyone born in England and Wales from the Sep quarter of 1911 onwards. When the indexes first went online I contacted my bank and asked them to change my mother's maiden name to something else. Such is the stupidity of the banks and other institutions that they had difficulty in understanding why I wanted to do this! Eventually persuaded, it actually took them three weeks to put my instruction into effect. Suppressing a mother's maiden name would appear to me to go against the spirit of genealogy, for whatever reason. It seems to me far better to give your bank another name, since all they really want is a code-word known only to you and them. It does NOT have to be your mother's real maiden name. -- Roy Stockdill Professional genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE