Netiquette

Our Mailing List Netiquette

As with every mailing list out there in the internet there exist a certain minimal set of rules to ensure the a pleasant run of the mailing list for everyone.

Take your time, and read the following netiquette carefully!

There can always be something unclear, so if you have questions regarding to the netiquette feel free to contact the mailing list administrator:

What you can send:

In general you can send anything to our mailing lists which complies with the purpose of our mailing lists:

foreign-students – announcements for foreign students

You can send this here:

  • events where everyone is welcome (please make clear WHO is organising the event!)
  • if you have an apartment to let, you can announce it here (looking for an apartment-mails should be sent to the fs-chat-list!)
  • general information (mostly sent by someone in the committee)

fs-chat – for foreign students to chat

You can send this here:

  • looking for an apartment
  • looking for someone whose contact information you have lost
  • buying/selling things (no cigarettes or alcohol!)
  • general discussion

degree-students - for messages containing in particular information for foreign students who decide to stay a little longer to complete their degree in Helsinki!

esn-helsinki – for ESN board members

Please note that our mailing lists are moderated; every message that comes through has to be accepted first by the mailing list moderators. This means that it might take a while before e-mails come through to the mailing list. If an e-mail has been sent to the wrong mailing list (usually the foreign-students list), we keep the right to send it to the corresponding mailing list instead (usually the fs-chat list).

What you should not send:

  • Personal conversation. If you want to contact someone you know (or you think) he/she is on the mailing list, you may ask on the fs-chat-list for his/her e-mail address, but personal conversation itself has to happen outside the mailing list (as there are more than 1000 people on the biggest of our lists and most of them are not interested in following the conversation).
  • Insulting messages. None of our mailing list is a forum for carrying on a private feud in any way. Any kind of such messages will not be tolerated in any way on our lists. More over, all comments that can be read as racist or agitating against an ethnic, religious, political or other group of people are not only morally intolerable – they are also against the law.
  • Chain letters. Don’t send any chain letters (petitions, virus warnings, etc.) to this mailing list. They are 99% not true and even in the case the would be true would not change anything. If you want to send a chain letter to somebody, then send it in person to this person, but not to our (or in general to any) mailing list.
  • Large pictures or attachments. Large attachments tend to fill up people’s mailboxes which causes them to be unable to receive more e-mails. Moreover some people still use a slow connection to read their e-mail and downloading pictures and other large attachments can be annoying and moreover cost time and money for them. If you want to send a photograph, a map, etc. to the list, please put it on a web page instead, and only write the URL in your mail.
  • Offers for selling cigarettes or alcohol are strongly forbidden on any of our lists. To this specific rule there is no exception. Any offer to sell such things on our mailing list will result into immediate reaction of our side without any warning.
  • Also, please don’t “cross-post” your message to several mailing lists simultaneously. After something is cross-posted, people on the other mailing lists often start sending messages by replying to all of the lists, which tends to lead to a flood of off-topic mail.
  • Advertisement of things considered forbidden. You are organising a huge party in a HOAS apartment? Well, the ESN mailing list is not the right medium to advertise for your party (moreover, there are more than 1000 people on the foreign-students list, so you would eventually face problems with the amount of people).
  • The same message several times. There are enough e-mails on our lists anyway, so we do not recommend you to send the same message several times. We will not forward it more than once, max twice.

Ultimately it is the mailing list moderators who decide what e-mails to forward to the list.