Some SCRoots subscribers have commented about announcements in the Forum.  So I
thought this would be a good time to re-examine the Forum policy about
announcements.  The following are my thoughts on the subject.  If you have other
opinions or comments, feel free to send them to me.  But, lets don't discuss
this in the Forum.

Normally I don't allow announcements in the Forum which are basically commercial
advertisements.  But, I recently forwarded a message which I allowed as an
exception.  I considered that announcement an allowable exception because:

a. It came directly from the author, not from a retail bookseller.

b. The author explained in her message how the book relates to South Carolina
genealogy.

c. The author offered to do lookups on request for Forum members.

d. The author gave her personal email address and mailing address for such
requests.

e. The message did not contain extraneous commercial advertising.

f. The author politely sent the message to me privately rather than just posting
her announcement in the Forum.

In general, if an author has a book of particular interest to South Carolina
genealogy researchers, and they want to offer a message similar to the one
mentioned above, then I'm inclined to allow such postings.  I think it adds
value for the Forum subscribers to have direct contact with authors.  Authors
who post messages in SCRoots are welcome to put a short blurb about their books
in their signature lines.

I don't mind people putting subtle, very short advertisements with contact
information in their signature lines.  Every message that comes to the Forum
From Juno, Hotmail, etc., already has such an advertisement tagged onto it.  As
long as the basic message is useful and on-topic, and appropriate for the Forum,
it is okay for people to tell a little bit about your business in the signature
lines.  If it gets out-of-hand and people abuse this liberty, then I'll
reconsider.

There have been some announcements in the SCRoots Forum but there haven't been
too many of them and most people haven't been abusing the privilege.  If they
start becoming a problem, I will take appropriate action to remind people about
the Forum policy.  

I have taken exception with some announcements about new email forums.  There
are many thousands of email forums around the internet.  Hundreds of new ones
are started every week.  I won't allow SCRoots to become the place they are
announced.  There are other appropriate methods available to announce mailing
lists services.

There are other Forums which are dedicated to announcements of all kinds.  I
don't want SCRoots to evolve into an announcements Forum.  In general,
announcements are against Forum Policy and should be cleared with me prior to
posting.  Within reason and common sense of course some on-topic announcements
will always be allowed.

I also intend to create web pages on the SCRoots web site listing books and
other publications which might be of interest to South Carolina researchers. 
When I get that done, then there will be less need for announcing them in
email.  But, it may be a while before I get around to that.

If you have other thoughts on this topic which you would like considered, send
them to me directly.

Steve Coker, Manager
The SC Genealogy Forum
[email protected]

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