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    <title>Castor Mailing Lists</title>
    <header>
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    <section title="Mailing Lists">

        <section title="Announcements">
        
            <p><mailing-list name="announce" 
                             description="The Castor announcement mailing list"
                             server="codehaus.org"/></p>
                             
            <p>This list is a <b>read-only</b> low volume (possibly about 1 message 
               per week) mailing list for special announcements related to Castor, 
               such as new releases.</p>

        </section>

        <section title="User mailing list">

            <p><mailing-list name="user" 
                             description="The Castor user's mailing list"
                             server="codehaus.org" /></p>
        
            <p>This list is a moderate volume (between 10 and 25 messages a day) 
               mailing list for the <b>users</b> of Castor. It should be used to 
               discuss general questions related to the use of Castor, problems you 
               are having getting Castor to work, etc.</p>

            <note>Please familiarize yourself with the 
               <a href="#Guidelines">guidelines</a> before posting to the list.</note>

            <p><b>Archives:</b></p>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="http://archive.castor.codehaus.org/user">The Codehaus</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/user@castor.codehaus.org/">mail-archive.com</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=castor-user&amp;r=1&amp;w=2">The Aims Group</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.castor.user">GMANE</a></li>
            </ul>
         
            <note>Make sure you are subscribed to this list prior to posting, by sending a 
                  blank email to the subscription address mentioned above. Although mails 
                  from non-subscribers are manually moderated through if applicable, our 
                  policy is to reject mails from regular posters who fail to properly 
                  subscribe. All this is to prevent spam, and to reduce the workload of 
                  the moderators.</note>

        </section>

        <section title="Development mailing list">
        
            <p><mailing-list name="dev" 
                             description="The Castor developer's mailing list"
                             server="codehaus.org" /></p>

            <p>This list is a moderate volume (possibly less than 15 messages a 
               day) mailing list for developers working on or wanting to work on 
               Castor itself (not developers merely working with Castor), for code 
               patches to Castor to be posted (please use diff -u format), and for 
               general Castor questions.</p>

            <p>Note this is NOT for general Castor questions like "Why isn't Castor 
               working for me?" - please ask those sorts of questions on 
               the user mailing list (after reading the FAQ first, of course).</p>

            <p>This list will be used by the main committers to discuss the following 
               items:
            <ul>
                <li>Bug reports/enhancement requests.</li>
                <li>On-going development activities.</li>
                <li>Potential new features to be incorporated into the product.</li>
                <li>Upcoming releases</li>
            </ul></p>

            <p>Please subscribe to this mailing list, as we believe that feedback 
               from the user community on many of these issues is essential for 
               the progress of the project.</p>

            <note>Please familiarize yourself with the <a href="#Guidelines">guidelines</a> 
                  before posting to the list.</note>

            <p><b>Archives:</b>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="http://archive.castor.codehaus.org/dev">The Codehaus</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@castor.codehaus.org/">mail-archive.com</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=castor-dev&amp;r=1&amp;w=2">The Aims Group</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.castor.devel">GMANE</a></li>
            </ul></p>

            <note>Make sure you are subscribed to this list prior to posting, by sending a 
                  blank email to the subscription address mentioned above. Although mails 
                  from non-subscribers are manually moderated through if applicable, our 
                  policy is to reject mails from regular posters who fail to properly 
                  subscribe. All this is to prevent spam, and to reduce the workload of 
                  the moderators.</note>
        </section>

        <section title="SCM mailing list">
            
            <p><mailing-list name="scm" 
                             description="The Castor SCM mailing list"
                             server="codehaus.org" /></p>

            <p>This <b>read-only</b> list sends out notification messages detailing any change 
               made to the Subversion (SVN) repository where all the source code and 
               libraries are stored for development purposes. The average user probably 
               doesn't need to subscribe to this list.</p>

            <p><b>Archives:</b></p>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="http://archive.castor.codehaus.org/scm">The Codehaus</a></li>
            </ul>
               
        </section>
        
    </section>

    <section title="user vs. dev">

       <p>Please use above mailing lists for what they are intended for. Please use
          the descriptions above to target your message to the correct mailing list.</p>

       <p>By all means, please avoid <b>cross-posting</b> messages to both lists,
          as it will decrease the quality of service we would like to offer.</p>

       <note>Having said that, there might be a valid case for cross-posting
             a message (e.g. us confirming that a problem is a result of a bug, and hence
             referring you to 'dev' for further discussions), but in general
             the use of this should be restricted as much as possible.</note>
    </section>

    <section title="Interaction and acronyms">

       <p>As we believe that an effective interaction with the user community is
          essential for Castor to progress as a project, we have decided to establish a
          slightly more structured approach in dealing with many of the issues we
          and you encounter.</p>

       <section title="Acronyms">
          <p>Especially on (but not necessarily restricted to) 'dev', we will be much
             more interactive about many of the issues mentioned above. As such, we have
             decided to structure our messages more thoroughly, and have come up with the
             following set of acronyms to show our intention:</p>

          <ul>
              <li><i>RFC</i> - <b>R</b>equest <b>F</b>or <b>C</b>omment</li>
              <li><i>RFV</i> - <b>R</b>equest <b>F</b>or <b>V</b>oting</li>
              <li><i>ANN</i> - <b>ANN</b>ouncement</li>
              <li><i>RFR</i> - <b>R</b>equest <b>F</b>or <b>R</b>eview</li>
          </ul>

       </section>

       <section title="[XML] or [JDO]">

          <p>Please prefix your messages to all mailing list with either [XML] or [JDO].
             This will help us to improve the time it takes us to react to your needs.
             Having said that, all committers will monitor both areas.</p>

       </section>

    </section>

    <section title="Guidelines">
    <p>
    The following are some general "common-sense" guidelines for using the
    mailing lists:</p>

    <p>
    Most people are already following these guidelines. To those people, we
    thank you. For those of you who are not ... please read carefully.

    <ol>

       <li><p>Please be kind and respectful to your fellow castor users.</p></li>

       <li><p>Please refrain from using words and phrases like URGENT, IMPORTANT,
           MY WIFE WILL LEAVE ME IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND, etc, in the subject line
           of your postings. Or even in the body of the message for that matter.</p>

           <p>You may think that things which are URGENT, or IMPORTANT to you,
           are just as urgent and important to everyone else reading this
           list. You'd be surprised at just how wrong an assumption like
           that can be.</p></li>

       <li><p>Please use meaningful subject lines. "Newbie Question",
           is not meaningful what-so-ever.</p></li>

       <li><p>Please provide necessary information, where applicable.
           Statements like, "I receive a NullPointerException when
           using Castor, what's up with that?", are not very helpful,
           add unnecessary traffic on the list, and will probably
           never get an answer.</p></li>

       <li><p>As a follow on to #3, when submitting examples, please try
           to submit the smallest possible example which demonstrates
           the problem. Short examples are easier to follow and will
           get quicker responses from developers or other users than
           long examples with lots of extraneous code/data.</p></li>

       <li><p>Please read the documentation before posting. It doesn't take
           long and it will save us valuable time from having to answer
           questions that are already covered in the docs.</p></li>

       <li><p>Please check the mail archives before posting. Many questions
           on this list have already been answered before.</p></li>

       <li><p>Please refrain from posting confidential information. Once an
           e-mail is sent to the list, it goes out to all subscribers,
           including archive engines. We cannot remove or delete messages
           sent to the list. Once sent they are available for the public
           to see. If you are unsure about what is confidential or not,
           check with your manager, supervisor, or the person in charge
           at your company.</p></li>


       <li><p>If you are going on vacation. Please enjoy yourself. We
           really want you to have fun and get some much needed
           rest and relaxation. With that being said and to be
           perfectly honest none of us really want to receive your
           automated vacation responses. So please either add a filter
           to your vacation response so it doesn't get sent to the
           list or users posting to the list, or simply remove yourself
           from the list before you go, and add yourself back when
           you return.</p></li>

       <li><p>Please refrain from sending emails to this mailing list formatted
           as text/html.</p></li>
           
       <li><p>Please start a new thread per topic/question. As a result of this, please
           avoid 'hijacking' existing threads.</p></li>

    </ol>
    </p>


    </section>

     <section title="A note about HTML formatted e-mail">
       <p>
       As stated in the guildelines above (see #10), please <b>refrain</b> from sending email to
       these mailing lists formatted as <b>'text/html'</b> under all circumstances.
       </p>
       <p>
       Amongst other things, it complicates life for users not working on
       Windows and decreases usability of the mailing list archives, as it
       prevents text searches from returning useful results.
       </p>
       <p>
       Additional information why we consider HTML emails to be avoided can be
       found <a href="http://www.birdhouse.org/etc/evilmail.html">here</a>.
       </p>
     </section>

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