ACTION@EFF.ORG ACTIvism ONline Mailing List FAQ 1.01 ========================================================== Frequently Asked Questions and Answers about ACTION@eff.org, the Activism Online Mailing List An ACTION Document maintained by Stanton McCandlish Updated: 09/22/94 This document is intended to serve as a reference on the ACTION mailing list. The most current version of this document can be found at ftp.eff.org, /pub/Groups/ACTION/action.faq gopher.eff.org, 1/Groups/ACTION, action.faq http://www.eff.org/pub/Groups/ACTION/action.faq Outpost BBS: +1 202 638 6119 (8N1; 300-14400bps V.32bis, V.42bis; 16800bps ZyXEL), file area: Activism--Misc, file: action.faq The list charter, action.charter (action.cht on the BBS) is also archived in the above places. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RECENT CHANGES -------------- 1.01 - fixed minor typos; added clarification a voting procedures. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS --------------------- 0.) How do I subscribe/unsubscribe? Send a message body of "subscribe [optional email@address here] ACTION" (no quotes) to listserv@eff.org to subscribe. To leave the list, send a similar message "unsubscribe [email@address] ACTION" to listserv@eff.org. It is a good idea to specify the email address if you have more that one account (e.g. in case you forget which one is actually subscribed.) * Please, do NOT send sub/unsub requests to the list address. Use the listserv address! If you have problems, send queries or problem reports to action-admin@eff.org (an alias for real people, not an infobot, so please be detailed & specific). 1.) What is ACTION? Action is the ACTIvism ONline forum, an Internet mailing list that exists to serve as a tightly focused, self-moderated forum and resource for online activists, both professional and volunteer. The list hosts both news announcements and relevant discussion. However, ACTION is not intended as a debate area or general chat forum, being geared toward networking among activists, planning and strategy, sharing of experience and information, and coordination of efforts. Originally, the older version of this list, eff-activists, was initiated as an experiment, to provide a forum for electronic frontier activists that was not so overrun with rancorous debate as other, more general, special interest groups like eff-talk/ comp.org.eff.talk, alt.activism, etc., while providing more room for discussion and planning than heavily restricted forums like announcements-only lists/newsgroups. Keeping in mind that we learn from negative as well as positive data, this experiment cannot be regarded as a failure, though it was too limited in scope, and too loose and unfocused to be as productive as ACTION aims to be. 2.) Who controls ACTION? The participants of the forum. ACTION is self-policing and does not have a single moderator. All participants are responsible for co-moderation* and especially self-moderation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) hosts this conference, though it is open to all, and is not an EFF house organ. (* "moderation" is used here in the more general sense of "making a forum work, keeping discussion on topic, and stimulating relevant participation during lulls" rather than the more specific sense of "approving or rejecting others' posts".) 3.) Why does this forum exist? ACTION was created because of a need for activists using online media, be they independent volunteers or representatives of organizations, to come together and pool their resources. Other forums have been created for somewhat similar purposes, but none perform this specific function. comp.org.eff.talk, alt.activism, talk.politics.crypto, and other unmoderated usenet newsgroups (and similar mailing lists, such as cypherpunks) are sources of a wealth of information, but have a "signal:noise ratio" problem that can rapidly drown out the more important content with flames and blather. Exclusive mailing lists like thesegroups (a fine private forum that has more in common with ACTION than perhaps any other) may not be amenable to "announcement"-type postings, particularly if they have appeared elsewhere already. Announcement-only forums such as net-happenings or rre do not allow room for even tightly focused discussion of the news they disseminate, leaving such traffic to redirect itself elsewhere. ACTION is here, in part, to provide an apropos "elsewhere". In short, all of these other forms of online special interest group provide a particular service, but none combine them as ACTION does. 4.) Why a list for online activism in particular? Ensuring the democratic potential of the technologies of computer-mediated communication requires active participation in the political processes that shape our destinies. "Democracy is not a spectator sport." - Craig Wilson Telecommunications are a powerful tool, but a complex one, and mastery of the medium for the activist will require a meeting of minds, a lending of experience between peers. Additionally, the grassroots activist suffers several handicaps, and professional lobbyists typically have advantages that the concerned citizen or volunteer campaigner do not, including funding, visibility, experience, contacts, training, media attention, and social status within the policy/politics realm. For these reasons and more, it is sensible to consolidate online activism efforts when they can be consolidated, to earn for the cyberspace players their proper status in the "game". 5.) What are the objectives of ACTION? ACTION has 3 kinds of objectives: General Objectives, Strategic Objectives, and Tactical Objectives. A.) General Objectives General Objectives are long-range general pursuits in the emerging data/ telecom picture. General objectives are the goals behind this ACTION forum. These include, but are not limited to: I.) to provide an open and comfortable collegial atmosphere to foster cooperation and advancement II.) to gather information otherwise difficult to locate, and pool it IIV.) to raise awareness of local issues with activists in other areas IV.) to raise awareness of issues and of computer mediated communication in the public, in the media, in govt., and in the commercial realm. V.) to improve resources for online activism VI.) to share activism and networking experience VII.) to work toward coalition-building and inter-organization cooperation IIX.) to extend and enrich civil liberties, offline and online IX.) to work cooperatively on volunteer projects to improve activism, virtual community, and access to information. X.) to uphold programmatic goals, including but not limited to: a.) unrestricted privacy and security b.) unrestricted freedom of expression c.) unrestricted access to government information d.) unrestricted access to information infrastructure e.) unrestricted ability to be a provider as well as a consumer of of information f.) clarification of laws and legalities of communications and computer use, including the reform and prevention of harmful laws and regulations, and the advocacy of those that would be beneficial g.) prevention or removal of monopoly, governmental or commercial, over content and conduit in information access h.) development and extension of democratic potential of networking and computing i.) unhindered, ethical advancement of networking and information technology j.) prevention of abusive and unjust harassment and prosecution on the basis of fear, ignorance, poorly drafted or obsolete laws, and other "reasons" for governmental scapegoating of users of computer mediated communication. * NOTE: It is not demanded of anyone that they agree with all of these goals; a libertarian may be leery of univeral access, but highly support- ive of digital privacy, for example. Such a person's participation is as welcome as any others' Tracking: General Objectives are to be listed in the Charter & FAQ (which will also list the programmatic General Objectives), which will be updated as necessary, and available in a separate list (incl. programmatic) for convenience. A >50% majority vote will be sufficient to add a General Objective, and a 75% supermajority vote is required to remove a General Objective. General objectives will be defined by consensus, and should reflect the feeling of the majority of participants, rather than any one individual or organization. B.) Strategic Objectives Strategic Objectives will deal with critical macro-issues (e.g., privacy/ cryptography policy, access to govt. information, etc.), or behind the scenes "make or break" situations having widespread or long-term consequences (e.g., imminent passage of an ill-conceived "computer crime" law). Tracking: Strategic Objectives will be specified in a list regularly updated by a volunteer or team of volunteers. Strategic objectives should be categorized by area, then by subject. Strategic objectives are to be defined by a consensus process, generally, though any person or organization may add a Strategic Objective to the list at any time (e.g. if they need some volunteer assistance), though a 75% supermajority vote may remove a Stategic Objective. Completion or complete failure of the objective automatically removes it from the list. C.) Tactical Objectives Tactical Objectives would be limited engagements in specific areas (e.g., ensuring that adequate provision exists for private sector participation in responding to a given municipality's Request for Comments or Proposals; contacting a specific legislator regaring an upcoming vote; countering a particular instance of bad press on a political issue or legal case). Tracking: As with Strategic Objectives. 6.) How does the list operate? ACTION is a simple mailing list, not digested, filtered, or hard-moderated. At some point in the future, it is hoped to upgrade to a listserver that can filter at the source (e.g. not send you list mail, based on criteria you specifiy, so you can tailor your feed to suit your needs and tastes, and save bandwidth), and do individually customized digesting. People not on this list can post to it. This has a slight risk of inviting unwanted posts from outsiders (this has yet to occur), though, in "trade", offering participants the option of posting from any of their email addresses, using redirect/bounce to send messages to the list without them being rejected, or even posting via anonymous remailers. For anyone new to mailing lists: A mailing list is a forum or conference for discussion or information dissemination (or both). It works by participants sending messages to the list address (e.g. action@eff.org). The list processor (listserv) then sends copies to all subscribers. For more information on this and other Internet resources and methods, send any message to netguide@eff.org for a copy of EFF's comprehensive Guide to Internet. 7.) How is the list moderated? This list depends on self-moderation! This means moderating your own posts - staying on topic, taking long-winded debates to private mail or "talk" forums, and avoiding flaming - AND it also means helping, politely and in private mail when possible, to help moderate the forum. If people are flaming, ask them nicely to take it off the list. If traffic lulls, find new material. If a vital issue is being ignored, bring it up. The true operating mode of this list is that of a self-policing virtual community. It is prinicpally up to you, the list participants, to decide the tone, operation, and content of this list. If you respond to flames, you create flamewars and harm the value of the forum. If you post junk mail, you likewise reduce the forum's usefulness. If you work cooperatively, and post important and thoughtful material, you'll collectively build a resource valued by all participants. Make the forum what you want and need it to be. Help steer the ship away from rocks and stimulate the flow of the conference if things lag. Consider the self-moderation of the list to be a system of privately- practiced law (PPL). You all define the rules, you all enforce them. And you all participate under them, else the entire system breaks down. YOU make this forum worth the time and effort. YOU provide the content. YOU provide the experience, the collegiality, the helpfulness, and the information. No one else will do it for you. If you are an activist, you're probably used to this mode of operation anyway, so you'll feel right at home. 8.) How is the list directed, and how are disputes resolved? Conflict resolution and decisions about the direction of the list will be handled by vote, if and when necessary and appropriate. ACTION is not "owned" by EFF or any other single group or individual, but consists of the people participating in it and the content they provide. In keeping with the general priciple that democracy is a good thing, and that people should responsibly determine what they read and write, and the more specific requirement for concentration and clarity, a democratic system with recourse to an arbitrator seems the best compromise. The administrators will be happy to serve as arbitrators, or disputing parties may choose their own arbitrator. It is preferred, of course, that all disputes, especially those of a personal or questionably relevant nature, be handled off the list. 9.) How is the list administered? What's the legal fine-print? The list is provided, free, by EFF. Technical contact for ACTION: action-admin@eff.org (Stanton McCandlish & Dan Brown). We'll be happy to help you if you have difficulties. Listserv requests should be sent to the listserv@eff.org address, not to the list itself. The archives of public list materials (FAQs, etc.) are maintained by the list admins as well. List administration topics should be kept off the list when at all possible. If something needs to be brought up, please use an "ADMIN:" prefix in your subject (e.g. "Subject: ADMIN: too many people are flaming!") It is very useful to use such prefixes for other topics, so people can more easily track issues they are interested in. Some examples: ALERT, URGENT, CRYPTO, GOVT-INFO, PRIVACY, ETHICS, HELP, POINTER, etc. The list administrators are empowered to remove disruptive and boorish participants from the list with a 75% supermajority vote for a period of time or permanently, or require that the participant read-only for a period of time. It is not anticipated that this will actually ever occur, and if it does become necessary, this will be indicative that the list needs to make greater efforts at self-moderation. In the case of severe problems (e.g. attempts to crash or crack EFF machines, mail bombing of list participants, etc.) list admins may make an administrative removal of the offender without a participant vote (remember: EFF is providing this service from our machines and resources, and in the event of security problems, we WILL deal with the problem as we must.) This is not expected to ever be neccessary either, but the provision is here just in case the King of Flamers, Crackers and Unethical Jerks shows up on the list some day EFF reserves the right to shut down this list temporarily or permanently. In such cases, participants are welcome to simply relocate the list to another site, temporarily or permanently. Please note again that no one "owns" the list; like cyberspace itself, the list is a consensual process, not a "thing". Neither EFF nor anyone associated with EFF are under any obligations, and Neither the list admins nor EFF nor any appointed or elected officers (project coordinators, etc.) provide any warrantee or guarantee of any sort whatsoever, express or implied. All participants are responsible for and liable for their own postings or for postings made from their accounts. Use this forum at your own risk. Participation in this forum constitutes acknowledgement of and agreement with the above conditions. Batteries not included. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. You own your own words. Subject to a vote altering these provisions (e.g. allowing full archival of list traffic or some such), all postings are to be considered copyrighted by their posters (unless otherwise noted). Neither EFF nor anyone else has any rights to your content, nor to the content as a "collective work". It is presumed that posts marked "press release", "please distribute", "announcement", "news" or otherwise indicative that distribution is allowed, or having the character of an announcement of some sort, are in fact redistributable unless otherwise noted (e.g. "discussion draft, please do not repost" means what it says.) It is presumed that anything indicating specifically that it is for this list only is not to be forwarded to others, and that all other posts, incl. those not marked, are OK to forward to other individuals with instructions not to repost, but may not be forwarded to other forums or otherwise publicly reposted. JOURNALISTS: Please respect these guidelines. If you wish to quote, reprint, or excerpt from something - ASK THE AUTHOR for permission please. It is conditional upon your participation in this forum to presume that all postings other than those intended for redistribution beyond this list are off-the-record, informal, and do not represent anyone other than the speaker, unless otherwise noted. A >50% majority vote can change this YOYOW policy if necessary (e.g. if the list participants wish the entire list to be archived, or feel that the reposting restrictions are too tight, etc.) Such a vote does not work retroactively - material posted to the list during a period in which it was covered by this YOYOW policy is still covered by that policy. 10.) What is appropriate to post to the list? This is by no means an exhaustive list, but should serve as a series of reasonable examples: action alerts press releases from relevant organizations government documents, press releases, and requests for comments proposed legislation (national, regional, local) summaries of news reports and instructive editorials requests for and offers of volunteer help with projects and issues relevant material from the traditional print media - WITH permission from the copyright holder pointers to sources of important documents, information, services contact information for govt. agencies, legislators, reporters, industry leaders, and other "players" relevant FAQs and instructional materials negative articles that should be responded to proposals for inter-group cooperative projects concise and reasonable discussion of relevant topics and issues questions and advice about forming organizations, finding information, lobbying, etc. computer security information relevant legal case documents transcripts of relevant testimony, speeches, media events As a rule of thumb, posts should be related to: A.) activism, in general, using online resources and networking (e.g. how to find govt. info online, how to conduct online campaigns, legislation in ASCII text, etc.) B.) activism, online or off, regarding online issues (e.g. warnings of impending legislation that will affect telecommunications, Requests for Comments on govt. email systems, news that PGP has been cracked >:-> and the like.) 11.) What is NOT appropriate to post to ACTION? Again this is not all-inclusive, but should give a general feel: unsubscribe requests [those got to listserv@eff.org] flames and tirades basic questions about participating organizations [ask the contact people at the orgs, in private email] unsupported conspiracy theories and accusations enormous documents [give pointers] personal-oriented posts, or posts of relevance to only or a handful of particpants [use person-to-person email] "newbie" internet or computer questions [try news.newusers.questions] arguments about list adminstration or structure unless very urgent circular, irrelevant, unproductive, or nitpicking debates and arguments material for which the copyright holder has not granted permission for posting hacking/cracking/phreaking material binaries (programs, graphics) and otherwise non-human-readable material (PostScript files, etc.) "I'm going on vacation" notices and the like messages of a discriminatory or prejudiced nature [no one's here to enforce "political correctness", but attacks on other people's culture, race, sex, nationality, etc. are unlikely to be conducive to cooperation.] rebuttals to irritating off-topic posts [respond privately or ignore them] political squabbles of the kind so frequent in unmoderated forums (libertarianism v. socialism, etc. - anything that begins to look like "my politics is bigger than your politics") advertisements jokes attacks on other organizations you should be cooperating with material about activism that isn't online, isn't in relation to something online, and isn't in relation to non-contentious civil liberties issues. (e.g. environment, abortion, gun ownership, drug legalization, etc. These topics are all fine and dandy, but they don't belong here.) illegal or "questionably legal" material of any kind technical questions or problem reports about the list or list software (send them to action-admin@eff.org) 12.) What are ACTION Projects? All participants in ACTION should get involved in projects. Projects are divided into 3 varieties, in the same categories as the Objectives. If you have any free time at all, help out if you can. If we don't do this, no one will. A.) General General projects consist of two types. First, those reflecting work to implement the General Objectives (there probably won't be many such projects since it is work on the Strategic and Tactical Objectives that leads to the General ones, and the Gen. Ojb. are rather too general and abstract to lend themselves directly to project work.) The other variety are those relating to the list itself, such as the maintenance of the Objectives listings, the ACTION FAQ, congress contact lists, and other such resources, as well as vote counting and other list-operation-related tasks. B.) Strategic Strategic projects relate to the Strategic Objectives or are otherwise strategic in nature. Examples might be working to form an organization in a area that does not yet have it's own online civil liberties group, creation of detailed lists of govt. contact information, writing of a database of mainstream media material on computer crime, etc. Long term plans and resources. C.) Tactical Tactical projects are of a more short term or specific nature. Examples: creating a list of contact information for a certain legislative committee, researching a particular legal case, tracking the status of certain piece of legislation, working with a company to encourage it to take a stand on an issue, creating a FAQ on a particular govt. information source, etc. Additionally, organization- or individual-specific projects fall in this category (e.g. help set up cross-gating of EFF BBS conferences to several BBS nets, help SEA or EF-Ireland set up a web server, help J. Random Activist make contacts with adminstrators at several government agencies, etc.) Tracking: Projects are to be kept track of on a list for each of the 3 types, showing a title and description for each project, and notes regarding needs, progress, expectations, problems, contact info for the volunteers working on it, deadlines and incept dates, etc. Any person or organization can add a relevant project of any sort at any time. Under most circumstances, a project should not need to be removed from the list (unless completed or completely failed); in any such cases, a 75% supermajority is required to remove the project. Finished or dead projects should be removed automatically, and listed in separate records of completed and failed projects. 13.) What are the list rules? More like guidelines than rules. There is no Holy List Emperor to enforce such "rules", only the social pressure of the other list participants. A.) Stay on topic. B.) Try to abide by majority votes; express objections in orderly & calm fashion (discuss in private mail rather than on list). C.) Try to cooperate and be collegial at all times. D.) If you have taken on a project and cannot continue or complete it, let people know so someone else can. E.) Don't be annoying, and don't be too easily annoyed. F.) Keep personal disputes and matters private. G.) Don't forward non-announcements off the list w/o permission from the author H.) Do not quote for publication from non-announcements posted to the list without permission of the quoted person. 14.) What about an archive site? Archival of list materials (projects, Objectives, FAQs, etc.) will be provided by EFF at: ftp.eff.org, /pub/Groups/ACTION/ gopher.eff.org, 1/Groups/ACTION http://www.eff.org/pub/Groups/ACTION/ Outpost BBS: +1 202 638 6119 (8N1; 300-14400bps V.32bis, V.42bis; 16800bps ZyXEL), file area: Activism--Misc This will be linked to /pub/EFF/Issues/Activism/ACTION/ (1/EFF/Issues/Activism/ACTION for gopher). Anyone is free to mirror or otherwise distribute the archived material, with attribution (e.g. don't cut out contact info, and when excerpting please note the source.) The list itself will not be digested or archived (not by EFF anyway).* If someone does wish to archive the entire list traffic, this should be subject to a 75% supermajority vote, since important privacy and intellectual propery issues are raised. [* Digesting may be provided in the future, after upgrade to new listserver software.] Redistributable items of interest posted to the list will also frequently be archived in various apropos locations at *.eff.org, and probably other sites as well, and also widely reposted. 15.) Can I gate this list (e.g. to usenet, a BBS, FidoNet, etc.) or cross-subscribe it with another list? This is subject to >50% majority vote, on a case-by-case basis. In general, other mailing lists should not be subscribed to this one, and certainly not vice versa. The only appropriate cases for such cross-subscription is for newsletters/announcement only lists, so that the material goes automatically to the ACTION list. This, again, should only be done if the majority want the material in question. Gating to usenet, etc. is subject to a 75% supermajority vote, due to the fact that this will seriously impact the signal:noise ratio and traffic volume. Exception: anyone may gate the list to news, BBS message area, etc. on a local (single system) basis for the convenience of users (this actually saves bandwidth). A >50% majority vote can remove such a gateway (e.g. if there are recurrent problems with users on the site posting off-topic or otherwise abusing the forum. 16.) How are votes conducted? Voting will be conducted on a (temporary?) voting list created for the purpose. Only those who volunteer to be vote counters, and those interested in seeing all the votes go by in their mailboxes need subscribe (though anyone may post to it, subscribed or not.) Only participants on the ACTION list may vote, and each *person* (not email address) gets one vote. Votes must bear a real name, or some other clear means of ascertaining that the vote is legitimate and not a duplicate submitted under a pseudonym (i.e. if you post your vote from an address other than that which you subscribe under, provide enough information to ascertain that you are in fact the same person as the subscribed email address.) Vote counters and forum participants should decide upon the level of verification deemed necessary, if any. Votes may not be submitted anonymously. QuickVoting: to speed the process, anyone may propose a QuickVote. Provided no one objects and asks for a real vote, any issue may be decided by a QuickVote. The decision to QV is a QV itself. A QV is simply a proposal in the list itself, which is considered to be ratified if there are no objections. If there are objections, anyone may propose a real vote. If no one proposes such a vote in the case of an objection by a participant, the issue is considered to have been voted down by default. In cases of QuickVotes, once a single objection has been posted no more should be posted. Either the proposition is deceased, or there will be a real vote. There is no need for objections from everyone that feels like objecting. QuickVotes can take the place of any vote, except those requiring a 75% supermajority, which must be conducted as real votes. Time: The timespan required to wait for the outcome of a QuickVote to be considered final is 48 hours, or 24 in urgent situations. For real votes, this period should be 72 hours, or 24 in urgent situations. If this is found to be infeasible, a >50% vote can change these time spans (and pretty much anything else for that matter.) If a vote counter's results are challenged there shall be a re-vote, using different vote counter(s). The challenger may not be the new vote counter. A >50% vote can institute a new voting system. (e.g. software like that used for newsgroup creation voting.) When tallying votes, only those that voted are counted (e.g. ">50%" means >50% of those voting, not >50% of all participants in the list. Votes can be yes, no, or abstain for any issue. In case of active abstentions, the vote is counted as a vote cast for purposes of tallying total number of votes, but is considered a neutral vote. In cases of inactive abstentions (not voting at all, not even to cast a vote of "abstain"), the vote is not tallied, since there was no vote at all. 17.) I just can't keep up! What do I do? You should look into a method of filtration. Email filters work by analyzing Subject, To, From and other headers, message size or date, even message contents and sorting mail for you into "folders", deleting what you don't want, etc. Or, you may wish to gate the list to a local (single-system) newsgroup for yourself and others at your site. Also, if the traffic problem is due to off-topic or otherwise useless posts, you'd do well to encourage (in private email) people to post more responsibly. 18.) There's just too much traffic, even with filtering! Now what? If it gets to that point, the list may wish to consider the idea of splitting the list into action-news, action-talk, etc., and perhaps create project-oriented lists when necessary. 19.) This jerk called ME a jerk; should I call him a jerk? Probably not, but if you feel an overpowering need or desire to do so, please do it in private mail, not on the list. This charter and the associated FAQ are primarily based on the material of Stanton McCandlish, Shabbir Safdar, David Smith, Jeff Davis, and Lee Knoper, and more generally upon the work and experience of the networked activism community at large.