Netiquette and FAQ (English)

This is the open info mailing list by and for the Berlin-based association reflect! e.V. – Association for political education and criticalresearch on society (http://www.reflect-online.org).

This mailing list is open for information and announcements related to the issues of reflect!: casualisation of labor (also: job announcements), critical political/scholarly issues, announcements for interesting emancipatory events etc.

This mailing list is open for subscription to anyone. Any subscribed e-mail address can send e-mails to the list. The mailing list has almost 8.000 subscriptions – many more than when the list was started. We are happy about the interest and appreciate that the mailing list is developing to cover issues in demand. But there are also developments which we consider problematic.

This is why we decided to put down some explicit principles for communication on the mailing list: our „Netiquette“. The Netiquette consists of two parts – ..Content“ and ..Technicalities“. Please take two minutes of your time and read both.

You can subscribe to the mailing list here: https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/listinfo/reflect-info

1) Content and rules for this list

Soli“-list, not eBay

„Soli“ stands for solidarity. Solidarity means mutual support and self-help – principles which reflect! is committed to. This is why the mailing list is not only for classic reflect! issues like political education, but also for job offers, housing offers/searches for housing, free stuff and flea market stuff.

You can filter out these offers if you are not interested – see section ..Technicalities“ below for information on how to do that. Nevertheless, there has been a prevalence of flea market e-mails recently. We are not happy about that, so we would like to ask you the following:

Flea Market

The mailing list is not eBay! It is meant to give away stuff that you don’t need anymore. If you can’t afford to give away your stuff for free due to acute lack of money, precarity, proletarianization etc. – thenit is okay to ask for a donation. But please remember: The mailing list is NOT ebay!

Therefore:

Do not send lists of books and records with prices – give them away for free or go… to eBay.

Do not send commercial offers with technocratic product descriptions („… with super-soft-washing programme11, „iPod knows karate kicks“ etc.).

Do not inform the list of what has already been sold. Set up a standard reply to send directly to interested people for a few days.

Apartment offers

Although it might look different: It was not our plan to start a more or less alternative housing market. The housing offers are thought as an alternative forum to look for new flatmates for people who do not want to encounter some phenomena of mainstream society, such as racism, sexism, gentrification etc. We hope to alleviate the impositions of the housing market a little bit.

Therefore, we consider the following style of housing offers unacceptable:

•“Townhouses in prime location“

•Two-week vacation house-style offers •Horrendous conditions on subleases

Jobs and employment (for money)

The mailing list is also not intended to buy or sell services as cheap as possible. Solidarity does not mean that somebody who doesn’t want to grind their floor himself_herself asks the rest of the mailing list to do it for the lowest offer. The mailing list is intended to share job offers and help with the search for jobs. Therefore, we ask you to refrain from e-mails like this:

Work-for-free and exploiting internships. Send these to the waste bin, not to the mailing list.

Offers for cheap work without social insurance in the household, especially combined with the request to underbid each other.

Offering ..reimbursement“ instead of proper salary. This doesn’t make exploitation any friendlier Yes, the job market is a cruel monster. We can only forward the offers, but we cannot change them. Please check the conditions of the job offers you forward and filter out the uglier ones.

A few words about everything else:

This mailing list goes out to almost 8000 people. Whatever you wish to post – please take a moment to consider if this is really of interest to everybody on the list and if you really want to write it the way you did.

Discussions:

The sheer size of the mailing list prevents it from being a mailing list for discussion or conflict resolution. Short interventions and one-time replies are ok, but please consider if this really is of interest to all recipients of the list before posting. If you want to have a debate, organize an event and send an invitation to the mailing list!

Articles/general information

Posting articles and general information on political issues is ok, we even wish for it. We do not wish, however, for permanent spamming from individuals or groups on the same issue over and over again, a general overflow of info mails or advertisement for your private commercial bar. And please: Check if your issue has not been covered in one or several preceding mails.

Insults, racism, sexism

Racist, sexist, homophobic and antisemitic postings are not tolerated on our list. We encourage everyone to intervene in this case.

2) Technical stuff

You can subscribe to the mailing list here: https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/listinfo/reflect-info Important notice: You can also find information there on how to unsubscribe! Please try to unsubscribe on your own, we don’t have the resources to manage your list subscriptions.

List Archive

Due to its size, the mailing list does not have an archive. If you can’t find a mail you’re looking for, scan your mailbox or ask friends who also subscribe to the list. Please do not send mails to the mailing list asking for archived mails.

Subject headings and keywords

Many subscribers use keyword filters on their subscription. Please respect that by using the following German keywords in the subject of your e-mails. Our built-in filters will recognize them:

•forcontent#1 (Living arrangements, housing etc,)“Wohnen“

•for content #2 (Jobs, internships, scholarships, Call for Papers): „Stelle“, „Stellenausschreibung“, „Job“, „Praktikum“, „Stipendium“, „Cfp“

•for content #3 (Events, announcements): „Veranstaltung“ or „Ankundigung“

•for content #4 (Flea market) „Flohmarkt

•for content #5 (office spaces/co-working spaces) „Buroplatze“

Check the FAQ below for filter configuration!

3) FAQ for [reflect-info]

Can you get me on the mailing list?

No, you can do that on your own. Please respect that this is too much work for us.

Why has my mail been blocked?

Here are the criteria you have to meet for your e-mails being forwarded to the list Subscribe to the mailing list to send mails to it.

E-Mails need a subject in the subject header.

E-Mails may not exceed 2MB.

We only allow attachments which end on .pdf, .odt, .rtf, .doc, .gif, .png, .jpg

We do not forward e-mails from the list admin address! So make sure you write to the mailing list.

But I subscribed to the list and still can’t send mails!

Please check the EXACT address you used to subscribe to the mailing list.

Hint: Do you auto-forward mails to or from your address? Do you maybe send from an address which uses the same account but looks differently (a so-called alias)?

Examples for aliases: @googlemail.com vs. @gmail.com, zedat (Free Uni versify)-addresses, e.g. firstname. surname@fu-berlin.de vs. somelogindata@zedat. fu-berlin. de Send your mails from the exact address you subscribed with!

When in doubt, unsubscribe the wrong address and resubscribe with the correct one. No, we can’t do that for you due to lack of resources.

Which options can i choose and where?

See the following.

Can I get the mails in a daily digest?

Yes! please see below (No. 6).

Can you unsubscribe me during my vacation?

Do it yourself, please! Here are the instructions:

-Log in here: https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/options/reflect-info/using the password you used when you first registered. You should also receive it on the first day each month unless you deactivated that option.

-You can always get a new password by entering your mail address on this page.

-After logging in, you are on the site labeled „Personliche Einstellungen von bla@bla.net fur die Liste reflect-info“ where you can manage your personal preferences. Here you can:

  1. unsubscribe from the list, change your mail adress
  2. change the password,
  3. check or uncheck your monthly password reminder mail,
  4. pause the subscription: Switch „Mailzustellung“ to AUS,
  5. sitch to/from daily digest mails: Switch „Zusammenfassungs Modus“. We recommend the „Plain Text“- alternative! Caution: You can’t use filters on the daily digest!

How do I use the content filters?

Please use certain keywords in the subject headings for the content filter to work. Please use the following keywords as part of the subject headings:

  • for content #1 (Living arrangements, housing etc.) „Wohnen“

for content #2 (Jobs, internships, scholarships, Call for Papers): „Stelle“, „Stellenausschreibung“, „Job“, „Praktikum“, „Stipendium“, „Cfp“

for content #3 (Events, announcements):“Veranstaltung“ or „Ankundigung“

for content #4 (Flea market) „Flohmarkt“

for content #5 (office spaces/co-working spaces) „Buroplatze“

If you don’t set any filter preferences, you will get all the mails unfiltered.

Login to https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/options/reflect-info/. Section „Welche Themen interessieren Sie?“ (which content are you interested in). Choose what you wish to read. You will not receive e-mails not matching your filter.

What happens to e-mails not matching any keywords? In the next section „Mochten Sie Nachhchten erhalten, auf die kein Themen-Filter pallt?“ (Do you wish to receive mails not matching any keywords?) you can choose whether or not you wish to receive these mails or not.

If you choose the daily digest instead of single mails, you cannot use the personalized filter.

  • The filters work with subject headings only. Please use the keywords mentioned above in the subject headers!

If this page did not answer your questions, you can ask us via listadmin(a)reflect-online.org. We will try and get back to you as soon as we can.