Discussion guidelines
- Be nice. Give your fellow list members the benefit of the doubt.
- Do not mention by name anyone who is not a member of InterBECs. This is to protect the privacy of event participants, and to protect ourselves in case any of our discussions or documents leak out.
- When asking a "how do you do that?" question, you acknowledge that any advice given should be considered carefully in light of your own event’s unique circumstances, that your organization is entirely responsible for your event, and that your organization takes full responsibility for all decisions that affect your event.
- Treat everything said on the list as confidential. Do not disclose list communications publicly without the explicit consent of all parties involved in the communication.
- While multiple members from a single board are welcome to join InterBECs, they should talk privately amongst themselves and be in agreement before asking or answering a question.
- Some organizations have "policy boards." Some have boards with both policy and operational responsibilities. If your organization has a policy board, your top operational lead is welcome to join InterBECs, but inviting that lead is a decision for your board to make.
- Please include your event/organization name in your e-mail signatures on list.
Technical guidelines
Make as few assumptions as possible about what kind of software your intended audience may have. The recommendations at Simple Open Data are good.
For text documents, plain text is fine. If you want something with a little more formatting to it, I highly recommend writing in Markdown or MultiMarkdown. Both are plain-text formats that can be converted to HTML, Microsoft Word files, etc, using free or cheap software.
For tabular matter, use tab-separated value files or comma-separated value files. These are plain-text files that use commas or tabs to separate cells, and returns to separate lines. Excel, Google spreadsheets, etc, can all create CSVs or TSVs. They do not include formulas, so if you need to share a spreadsheet with its formulas instead of calculated values, an Excel file or equivalent is an acceptable fallback.
JPEGs are good for photographic images. SVGs are good for vector art. GIFs are OK for simple line art.
Use PDFs for complex documents that mix images and text, where formatting is important.
Try to avoid Microsoft Word or Excel, OpenOffice files, iWork files, etc.
Box.net (which is the current document repo) allows files to be tagged. Try to tag everything with the event name, jurisdiction, and general topic. So, for example, effigy-design guidelines for Burning Flipside might be tagged "flipside; texas; usa; effigy".