Good colleagues.

A few administrative issues: 1. The list has been set up to enhance communication by e-mail and to limit size of each posting. For users with fast internet size of a mail is not a concern, but for people on slow modem lines large mails creates large problems. So as of now the following rules guide the list: a. Attachments must be small b. Text in e-mail must be small. A combined limit of 25kb has been defined. A few days back a user attached a rec file with the size of almost 1mb which is far exceeding this size.

Individual users can exchange large attachments outside the list directly as suggested by Jamie Hockin.

2. Only certain attachments are allowed, e.g. small rec, chk and qes files.

3. Minimise the number of lines when you answer or comment on other mails. If a user asks a question - then on the reply only keep the minimal part indicating the topic of the question and reply. Otherwise the complete originating mail can be repeated several times.

4. Bouncing. When a person has an automatic mail saying e.g. "I am out of office please ....." then when a notice from the list comes to that person a message is sent to the person. The automatic message is sent back to the list, which then replies to the user etc. So if no mechanism controls several hundred mails can bounce back and forth.

Therefore some users will experience to be automatically signed off the list. This is not a censorship or similar but a mechanism to avoid that everyone gets many "I am out of office..." messages.

If you are excluded by "bounce-control" then just sign on to the list again when you are back from the leave. Or maybe create a different e-mail account which you use for receiving list messages.

5. Write in a specific and short manner and protect your e-mail adress You should be aware that messages you send to the list are: - distributed to all members (currently nearing 200) - is kept as part of the archive and is available for searching on internet. So to minimise the chance that your e-mail is trapped and used in a virus spread do not write it directly if you wish to receive personal mails, but write something like xxx at yyyy zz or similar. instead of xxx@yyyy.zz

6. Only users who are members of the list can submit messages. The first message by a new list member is sent to list administrators for approval. We could turn this off, but it will result in advertisements or spam messages every so often.

I assume list members appreciate the principles above, but I am willing to discuss some of them. E.g. the size of allowed attachments and mails.

Kind regards

Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association