If you know others who can join to the mutual benefit of all concerned, please use the form to initiate their application. They will be contacted shortly thereafter with clear step-by-step instructions as to how to join.

As you sign up you can elect to receive feedback from this site in the form of:

(a) Individual emails. To receive all individual email messages.
(b) Daily digest: To receive all emails for the day in one message.
(c) Special notices. Only send important update emails from group moderator.
(d) No email, I'll read the messages at the Web site at leisure.

Some of you may find one of the latter options more convenient. (We advise (c) rather than (d) by the way.)

If you wish to leave the list at any time, just send a blank email to

• kyoto2020-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com.

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Messages Procedures & Etiquette

When you answer a group message, your answer will in many cases be sent to all the members of the list. If you wish the sender only to receive your answer, please click on the "Forward" button instead of "Respond" and copy the sender's email address into the "To" box. We would ask you to be extremely careful about distinguishing between

1. Basically personal messages (such as a thank you note, a specific question or an observation intended for this or that person) which are best addressed to your individual correspondent, and
2. Communications to the group as a whole.

Exception Information:
We are all asked to bear in mind that our colleagues are very busy people and we want to make sure that whatever comes out of this forum (I) they do not receive more than a handful messages a week on average and (ii), more important, that what is distributed to the group is quite literally "exception information", i.e., communications which address issues which are of high common interest. I hate to say it, but when we see people being a bit too casual in their choice of mode, our list administrator actually goes in and picks off what we think to be a bit too personal and indicate this to them as such. This may strike you as a bit priggish on our part and indeed is a bit of a bore to actually do; but we think it's better that than overloading people who have a lot of real work to do and who see this as a useful tool and not one more wasteful Internet chore.

How many messages should YOU be posting to the group? Certainly no more than one or two per week. Thank you. In exceptional cases let's get together and figure out a strategy (since there are other options including our several "cafés".)

Copying content of earlier communications! Please do not simply copy and pass on the content of all previous communications. Nobody, nobody likes to wade through this stuff. Moreover, it obscures the point of your message for those whose time is important. Where you need to cite an earlier note for context purposes, please do this in a sparing and structured way ("judicious snipping" we call it). We will all appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Retaining Subject Headings: Once a discussion of any given topic has got underway, it helps retain the original subject heading. (This is because this heading in one of the main ways in which we can recall any given dialogue and exchange around that topic, a process of recall which we believe is extremely important to the extent to which this collective intellectual patrimony is available to be mined for subsequent uses. Likewise, if you note that the subject heading is preceded by a FWD: or Re: in any given case, it's a good idea to delete this so that your message will enter into the correct repertory.)

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Other guidelines to keep in mind:

1. Proof-read your submissions. The time you take is magnified 300-fold in time savings by readers in trying to understand your points.
2. Don't send very long messages, papers, or binary files to the list; rather, post a summary in straight text, offering to send to those requesting it the longer or coded document. Such requests should always be OFF-LIST (to the personal offering it, not the whole list). Another popular alternative is to point people to a website with your material.
3. Take the trouble to lay out your messages with paragraph breaks that facilitate fast reading and references. Also for longer messages, consider putting in sub-headings that can help your reader in getting to your main points.
4. When referring to research or statements, try to cite them, either a bibliographic or web reference.
5. In a reply, don't include the entire contents of the other's message, only the part you are commenting on. If your point is more general, consider only restating in summary point the comments of another (be careful to be accurate and not self-serving). Also, make sure you are replying to the correct party, the whole list (probably what your mail program will assume when you hit the "reply" button), or to the individual, which will require you to clip the sender's e-mail address before hitting "reply" and then pasting it in over the pednet address before starting to compose your reply. Remember, there is no feeling so "sinking" as when a personal message goes instead to 300 people.
6. After joining, don't post for a couple weeks, so that you can get a sense of the style of the list. Your first post might contain a short (one para.) introduction of yourself, but this is not required (when lists first start, introductions are the best way to get things started).
7. When passing on something from your word processor, please avoid the straight cut-and-paste approach, as you will bring non-standard characters and spacing with it, especially lines that are too long. Rather, change to courier 12-pitch type and then save it to ASCII format (*.txt), closing it, and then using the Notebook editor to bring it onto your screen again. Quickly proofread it for format, and then cut-and-paste it to your mail-program screen.
8. Finally . . . if you feel yourself getting heated about what another has written, consider sending that to only that person, not the entire list. This keeps the recipient from feeling as defensive and possibly escalating the exchange into a conflagration.

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Subjects, Categories, Key words

Bearing in mind that this site is certain to expand considerably, it is good for us all to be attentive to how we orgnaise our contributions.

For your emails, we ask that you make a habit of respecting and maintaining the orignal subject headings, when you write to it in any case. This will greatly facilitate your later reference.

The Search function is a powerful tool and especially useful when it comes to grouping references on a specific topic, region or country: click here for help in using.

And when you add anything to the Library/Files and Links/Bookmarks sections, it will be good if you use the indicated Folders as useful.

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List Monitoring

For better or worse, this is a "monitored" list. We do this, not because we like it, and certainly not because we enjoy playing that role, but in order to protect our subscribers and work partners from various forms of abuse and e-overload. On the one hand, we provide an additional screen to help protect from various forms of spam that occasionally manage to get through the generally pretty good YahooGroups controls.

In addition, we occasionally find ourselves constrained to reject letters that have been penned perhaps a bit too aggressively for our taste, or simply send out a reminder in instances in which someone has either sent to the group a communication that would be better routed to a specific individual, or loaded down his note with unnecessary encumbering copied material. Every once in a while we may unintentionally strike a nerve, but by and large this seems to work so we'll keep on doing it.

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Forgot Your Password?

That's simple. Here's the drill.

1. Click here to enter YahooGroups home page.
2. Where you see the slot to put your Password ... Don't! Instead click, "Forgot your password?".
3. You then just calmly follow the routine, bearing in mind that it will take about two minutes for the robot to send you via email your 'validation number'. (Be sure to check your email to get it.)
4. From there on in, it's quick. Just follow the several instructions and you are back in and fully registered and ready to go.

Thank you for your patience in this.

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To: All of us who are English language mother tongue and write to this forum

This note is intended above all for each of us here for whom English is our first language and who wishes to communicate to the group as a whole. (That said the rest of us may find some interest in this as well, and better yet may have some hints that can help us all to communicate more effectively.)

Let us bear in mind that most of our colleagues here, while generally highly fluent in English, have mastered it as a second (or third or fourth) language. Likewise, this language that we so easily call "English" is subject to a continuing assault of new words, phrases, interpretations, which vary from place to place even in the English language world. So if we really wish to communicate, to get our messages across to the whole group in all its varieties, then we must be very careful in how we write.

Here are a few quick guidelines that come to mind and which you may wish to consider:

• Be clear, concise, sober
• Do not affect a breezy manner
• No slang
• Avoid 'fashionable' uses or 'winking eye" code or jargon.
• Be polite (in a way which may seem to be excessive to an American or whatever, but we need to be very careful since most societies are more formalistic and consistently courteous in their communications)
• Avoid fancy words
• Use figures of speech sparingly
• Use the active voice
• Write with nouns and verbs
• A shorter sentence is better than a longer one.
• Prefer the standard to the offbeat
• And, sorry to say, avoid jokes (the scope for misunderstanding is simply too great).

Actually when we work our way down that list what we are really talking about here is effective communications and respect. In any language.

And is this hard to do? For my part I have to say "very"! But there you have it. We have a choice: Either to satisfy ourselves and some kind of club with our cleverness, or to reach out and make contact with the whole group. Given our ambitions international objectives here, I guess this is just something that we will do well to build in to our communications habits.

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A Closing Word on YahooGroups

For the better part of a decade we have been using YahooGroups and its antecedents as the supporting platform for this central communications and information storage function. We chose to do this because we felt they provided good functionality in support of our independent cooperative program, and because it was free (bearing in mind that we carry out all these programs under The Commons without any form of external financial support... so money is scarce). The only shortcoming of this arrangement is the publicity messages and the need to sign in, but this has been judged by most of our colleagues as a bearable inconvenience under the circumstances.

On the other hand, you may have some better ideas for us. We know we can do better and want to hear from you. So if you have leads, free storage space or money to throw at the problem, don't be shy. We're ready to listen.