This is the second edition of the FAQ for the rec.crafts.glass news group. It retains much of what was originally written by Paul Wilson, but has been updated by Steve Ackman.
FAQ's are kept here and at: John Riordan's Site
Alternately a copy of any section may be requested at any time by email from the current keeper who will reply by email, not in the newsgroup, so the newsgroup isn't filled with a lot of repeat messages, though the addresses of the FAQ sites will be posted about twice a month.
The current FAQ keeper is:
Steve Ackman steve@twovoyagers.com
This FAQ will hopefully be a dynamic and changing compendium of articles, and though all the sections listed in the Table of Contents have been completed, please feel free to submit an article on any other discipline of working glass, or if you feel that a particular FAQ has missed an important but basic aspect of its subject matter, please feel free to submit an addendum.
Individual authors and their email addresses (when available) are listed in the Table of Contents and at the beginning of each section. If you have a question about something, please consider asking it in the newsgroup, rather than in private email as this contributes to the newsgroup. If you think your question is too basic, please consider that there's probably someone else out there wanting to know the same thing, who's also reluctant to ask.
The various sections of the FAQ's are maintained by individual authors who retain all copyright protection afforded any author. These kind folks made contributions of time and effort to improve this newsgroup, so please respect their copyrights.
CHARTER
The scope of the proposed newsgroup rec.crafts.glass should include but not be limited to: - the working of glass in any manner such as stained glass glassblowing neon and other luminous tube casting fusing scientific/laboratory flamework bead making jewelry making - equipment - techniques - materials - safety - business issues - announcements of classes and shows - announcements of conferences The discussions will be held in English. FAQs should be developed for specific areas of interest and will be posted to the group on a periodic basis. Reasonable commercial announcements will be permitted as long as they are clearly marked as such in the subject of the message. This newsgroup is not intended to be a marketplace.Interpretation
Many people read the Charter and come away with different understandings of what it means. Where a common sense reading has failed, there have been long discussions on the group which have pretty much hammered out what the boundaries of those grey areas are. I'll attempt to convey the essence of many, many kilobytes of discourse on these areas:
Enforcement
This is an unmoderated group, which means enforcement is through peer pressure and self-policing. The only people who can enforce the rules are the members of the group. I find that many people who violate the rules do so unwittingly. A simple e-mail containing the charter is often all it takes to make someone aware of his indiscretion.
For those who refuse to respect the charter with a polite request, it's easy enough to look at the message headers and complain to their ISPs. Be sure to include the entire message (including headers) with your complaint, and as a rule, I include the charter as well.
So a complaint can be as simple as "This was posted in violation of the charter for this group. Please take whatever action is consistent with your TOS or membership agreement to insure this doesn't happen again."
Almost all ISPs have terms of service or membership agreements which prohibit the posting of newsgroup messages which are in contravention to the groups' charters.
(W3C HTML 4.0 validated 9
Sep'99)
updated 23 Aug '00