Version 1.6 30.08.1994

The Netiquette for the ZaMir Conferences

This is the net etiquette for the exchange of the ZaMir conferences between the ZaMir Transnational Net email systems and other email systems and networks. The netiquette is defined by the ZAMIR email systems. The ZaMir conferences originated in the ZaMir Transnational Net.

The Content of the Conferences

The ZaMir Transnational Net aims especially to serve people working for: the prevention of warfare; the elimination of militarism; protection of the environment; the advancement of human rights and the rights of peoples regardless of race, ethnic background, sex or religion or political convictions; the achievement of social and economic justice; women's rights; the elimination of poverty; the promotion of sustainable and equitable development; more and better democratic structures in society, especially the advancement of participatory democracy; nonviolent conflict resolution and to aid the communication between all people, especially for refugees. All groups and individuals who are in agreement with these aims will be actively encouraged to join and use the ZaMir Transnational Net.

The ZaMir conferences have been developed and are exchanged with the above goals in mind. Any email system and user that supports these goals is welcome to use these conferences.

We the originators of the ZaMir conferences kindly ask that the users of these conferences fulfill the following requests:

The purposes of the conferences for each conference (a short description) will be posted by the moderators in languages of the regions where ZAMIR email systems are located and additionally also in English.

Further notices for users

Technical Requirements

The maximum legnth of messages/files in all conferences is 64 kilobytes. The splitting of binary files is prohibitted. A special agreement must be made for any exceptions in order to be certain that the transport of larger messages will function. (The only exception now is for the few binary conferences that will be used for the transport of programms necessary for the use of the email systems.)

The maximum length of personal messages that are routed (i.e. forwarded through other email systems) is 100 kilobytes, although users are encouraged to limit their messages to 10 KB since larger messages may get stuck in some networks and therefore may be delayed or lost.

As most of the messages in the ZaMir conferences are written in languages that include characters not found in the ASCII code (<127) it is necessary that systems carrying these conferences support these additional characters. The practical measures concerning this issue must still be clarified, but we would ask that the email systems carrying the ZAMIR conferences make translation information and software available for their users so that they also may easily read the special characters >127 ASCII.

We (ZTN) will help to provide keyboard and monitor drivers (that are used in our region) and a translation table for the character sets so that the messages can be readable on your email system software. We will also attempt to help the system operators with any information about character sets and available drivers in order to facilitate the reading and writing of messages in our languages. A translation file (fonts.mbx) for Zerberus v5.2 is also available.

For the System Operators

Some conferences are READ ONLY. That means only certain groups (for example a media organisation) may write in that conference. The sysop must set up his/her system to ensure that these conferences may only be written to by authorized users. The ZaMir conference coordination can supply this information.

Censorship of content must never take place. Only technical (for example, length of message) limitations are allowed.

All users of the ZaMir conferences must have an email address that is internationally reachable. This enables all users to also write private emails to any user of the conferences.

All users of the ZaMir conferences should be identifyable as real persons. Anoymous users are not to be allowed to write in the the ZaMir conferences. The system operator should know the name and address of all the users of these conferences.

Coordination

Requests for the ZaMir conferences should be sent from your system operator to the ZaMir conference coordination of the ZaMir Transnational Net. This is taking place in the conference /ZAMIR/NET/SYSOP@ (any of the ZaMir systems) We will help you find the closest server for the conferences. Any changes in routing of the ZaMir conferences must be agreed upon with the ZaMir conference coordination.

We will not provide the ZaMir conferences to systems that cannot fulfill the above requirements.

The Zamir Transnational Net