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MN-POLITICS Purpose

The list encourages discussion from diverse political perspectives that is respectful in nature. This forum is more about the presentation of ideas and information than being right with one's ideology. E-mail-based forums are special in nature. They offer a significant opportunity for broad participation, but require members to appreciate the limits and strengths of text-only e-mail communication.

Minnesota E-Democracy seeks to build a forum that is informative, useful, and participatory. It is stressed that other forms of electronic communication offer alternative forums for free-wheeling debate. All postings to MN-POLITICS are archived at:

http://freenet.msp.mn.us/govt/e-democracy/mn-politics-archive/

While authors of list messages implictly agree to share their intellectual property through the list and its archive, the writers retain all the copyright privileges of their messages.

Guidelines for MN-POLITICS

MN-POLITICS is an unmoderated "on-line civic space" where members have the rights and responsibilities associated with open discussion and highly public exchange. The goal of MN-POLITICS is to bring as many people into this civic space as possible and balance that with efforts to ensure that most members find value in the information exchange.

Guidelines

1. No more than two postings per member within 24 hours.

2. No forwarding private messages to the list without permission of the author.

3. No insults, threats, and inflamed speech for the sake of personal arguement are allowed.

4. One-on-one arguements, disagreements, and disputes of a personal nature must be taken off list.

5. Postings must be within the scope of the list's purpose. (i.e. Minnesota politics. There are thousands of other Internet forums that cover other topics.

6. Because this is an unmoderated list, the responsiblity to define what is within MN-POLITICS's scope lies with the person posting the message.

7. Messages to the list must include the name and e-mail address as all or part of the author's signature.

8. Complaints about a list member's behavior should be directed to the list member or the list owner (masouder@alex.stkate.edu). These complaints should not be posted to the list.

1. The list owner may may remove a subscriber for violating the list's guidelines upon consulting the Minnesota E-Democracy Steering Committee.

2. The list owner is not responsible for monitoring every posting and will only review whether a subscriber has broken the rules upon receiving a complaint. The WWW archive contains all the posting and information needed to review whether the guidelines have been broken.

3. Members who feel that an individual is posting items that fall outside of MN-POLITICS's purpose should send a note directly to the person stating their concerns. This will help new members understand the culture of the list and e-mail in general.

4. If an individual on a regular basis posts messages that fall outside of MN-POLITICS's purpose, a determination on removal will be taken up upon request by the steering committee.

5. The steering committee reserves the right to remove any subscriber upon careful consideration for the preservation of the list as a Minnesota E-Democracy initiative.

6. The technical maintainence may cause a subscriber to be temporarily removed by the list owner. In these cases, the member may rejoin the list at anytime.