GPLAC eRules for participation in GPLAC emails lists and web-based discussion forums

Green eRules are meant to help promote a productive, transparent and respectful environment for this to occur.  GPLAC on-line forum participants are encouraged to state their views, inform one another, and discuss issues in depth, in a manner that enables energy to be focused on productive work. Disagreement over issues and ideas should be honored as an expected part this process, and is not to be considered a disruption or impediment.  Below are sections on Expections and Standards, and Restricting Dispuptive and/or Unethical Behavior.

Expectations and Standards
 
The following expectations and standards help govern participation on GPLAC forums.
 
 1. No anonymity. All subscribers must truthfully identify themselves at the time of subscription, and in the body of each message. At subscription time, applicants must give information sufficient to contact them in the event they lose email access.
 
 2. Address the group. Messages must be addressed to the entire group of subscribers. Side conversations and personal interactions must be taken to one-to-one email.
 
 3. No "personality-based" discussion. Speculation or accusations about another's motives, thought processes, or beliefs is off-charter. A focus on 'issues rather than personalities' should be the participants' guiding light.  Personal attacks, verbal threats and/or harassment can be grounds for loss of subscription.
 
4.  No misrepresentation of another's work.  Participants shall not misrepresent the work of others and shall make a good faith effort to be factually correct.
 
 5. No prejudicial, biased, or offensive language, with respect to race, gender, ethnicity, physical ability, spirituality, sexuality, or age. These are well-established principles of basic respect for each other in a healthy society.
 
 6. No insulting, disparaging, degrading, or demeaning language or any other ad hominem attacks. It's never necessary to label others in order to discuss their ideas and activities. Chronic, hurtful sarcasm, or giving people vengeful nicknames, or any other disrespectful treatment of fellow activists, is grounds for loss of subscription. It is never necessary to compare people to historical war criminals or other reviled figures.
 
 7. No flooding, repetition or crossposting. No double posting to other lists. A message posted to this list must have no other recipients (except the poster) in its To:, Cc:, or Bcc: lines.
 
 8. No off-charter material. There are thousands of Internet mailing lists about issues of interest to Greens. Nobody can read them all, and each of us must be free to set our own priorities. One can repost a message from elsewhere, but must introduce it by explaining where it came from and what it's got to do with the GPLAC, even if the relevance seems obvious. 
 
 9. Accurate, substantial subject lines. The "Subject:" line must truthfully identify the topic, so that people can decide whether to read your message, before they read it. Therefore, It is seldom appropriate to name another person in a Subject line. In particular, messages with Subjects such as "Joe Green" or "Joe Green's post" are not allowed. Messages with no Subject line will be rejected.
 
10.  Respecting subject lines/threads.  When a subject line is established and a discussion occurs, that subject line should be respected and not changed. A new subject line is appropriate when the subject has changed, but not as a tool to disrespect the initial poster or postings.
 
11. Limit message size. When replying to a specific discussion thread, it's not necessary to quote the entire email each time.  This helps servers run faster.
 
12. No 'cracking' (defeating the security of other peoples' computers) or forging someone else's email identity. Messages to the lists must be addressed to the announced posting address. No attempts to defeat the operation of the server software by guessing internal addresses are allowed. Messages to the lists must contain a From: address which is substantially the same as the address where the poster subscribes. False From: lines will be treated as an attempt to breach the physical security of the list server, and may violate your local "computer misuse" or "chattel trespass" laws.
 
13. Format of messages (25K maximum). The language of Internet email is plain text. Two alphabets are acceptable in these lists: the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) and the International Standards Organization's ISO8859-1, also known as Latin 1. (Latin 1 encoding must be correctly specified in your message header, using the Multipurpose Internet Message Extensions. Don't worry, most email software does this automatically.) No graphics, word processor documents, Microsoft Rich Text Format, or other non-text encodings are allowed, with one exception: customary cryptographic signatures or fingerprints are allowed. Keep the message size limited to 25K.

Restricting Dispuptive and/or Unethical Behavior
 
Behavior that truly disrupts, impedes or obstructs is not appropriate. Participants who violate these GPLAC eRules Expectations and Standards repeatedly will first:
 
1st infraction) Receive a private warning, wiht a reminder of the rules, from either a GPLAC Co-coordinator, the GPLAC Secretary or the Forum Moderator -- and with an explanation of the subsequent process if other violations occur. Multiple infractions within a 24 hour period will be treated as one infraction.
 
If the initial, private warning is not heeded, and the participant continues to violate GPLAC eRules Expectations and Standards, additional actions will be taken in this order:
 
2nd infraction) Receive a second, public (on forum) warning will be posted, from a GPLAC Co-coordinator, the GPLAC Secretary or the Forum Moderator. If the member continues to violate GPLAC eRules of Decorum,
   
3rd infraction) Receive a third, public warning (on forum) warning will be posted, by a GPLAC Co-coordinator, the GPLAC Secretary or the Forum Moderator, indicating that should there be a fourth infraction, the member will face immediate suspension;
   
 4th infraction) Be unsubscribed from the Forum, by the Forum moderator. 
 
The Forum Moderator shall notify the GPLAC Co-coordinators and GPLAC Secretary of the suspension and submit a report to clearly state the reasons for suspension.  The unsubscribed member is entitled to a copy of this report (although the County Council always retains the right to keep certain information confidential for certain, defined legal circumstances.)
 
The period of suspension shall not be less than three months and may be up to one year, upon discretion of the Forum moderator. 
 
This decision may be appealed to the County Council, with a 2/3 vote necessary to overturn or amend the decision.
 
As part of this process, the suspended member will be given an opportunity to submit a written response. During the period of suspension, the offending member will not be entitled to post any messages to the list, or to circumvent the suspension by submitting messages via another member's email account.
 
Should the County Council decide to reinstate the member's privileges, but with conditions, these shall ordinarily include the member's acknowledgement that he/she has been impeding the  listserve work, and agrees to curtail the disruptive behavior, as  prerequisites for reinstatement.  It may also include participation in mediation.
 
The GPLAC Forums exist to facilitate the work of the GPLAC. Ultimately it is the County Council's responsibility to judge whether a member's behavior on the GPLAC Forums, over time, is overly disruptive.  The decisions of the County Council, through its choice of Forum Moderator and through review of his/her decisions, are final.