1.7. Editorial guidelines (sci.med.aids)
Description
This article is from the AIDS FAQ, by Dan Greening with numerous contributions by others.
1.7. Editorial guidelines (sci.med.aids)
As with any newsgroup, read sci.med.aids for a few days before
posting, to see if your question has been answered already, and to get
a feel for the tone of the group.
Postings to sci.med.aids should:
* Write on topics directly relevant to AIDS, HIV, or related topics.
* Unconventional medical/research claims must be accompanied by
references to the popular press (i.e., major newspaper, magazine,
etc.) or scientific press (i.e., Science, Nature, Lancet, Scientific
American, Cell, Brain Research, etc.).
We require references for unconventional medical/research claims,
because some therapies carry with them potential danger. Some
unconventional medical/research claims are fallacious. Without this
policy, sci.med.aids would have printed several dangerous and
undocumented therapies by now.
* Political, sociological opinion/analysis articles are acceptable.
The interpretation, and even the existence, of this particular policy
continues to be the subject of internal debate among the moderators.
However, in the past we have printed articles holding both popular and
unpopular opinions on topics like "Quarantining HIV Positives" or "who
did Clinton appoint to the AIDS Task Force."
* Refrain from personally attacking other participants. For example,
do not call someone an 'idiot' or say they are 'biased'. Instead,
point out the flaws in their argument. If you find yourself getting
angry at a poster, and construct a reply, please try to remember this
rule.
It is often useful to wait a day to see what other reactions have been
posted before sending something off in anger.
* Send one line "quips" as personal mail to the original submitter,
rather than posting.
* When posing a question to a previous poster, reconsider whether the
question needs to be posted. Perhaps you could ask the question by
e-mail and request a posted response.
* Do not invoke religion.
* Do not break copyright laws. Reprints of articles from other
sources must include a statement of permission to reprint. An
exception is made for abstracts of articles from scientific journals,
which are not usually restricted. If you can't get reprint
permission, excerpt or summarize the article.
* Do not construct an article with more than 20% text from a previous
article, unless it is very old (i.e., months old). The best approach
when constructing a response is to tersely summarize the article to
which you respond, in square brackets. For example,
In article <11233@sci.med.aids>, Dan Greening wrote:
> [reasons to not include too much of a prior article]
Also, don't forget that many people get this stuff by mail, so huge
inclusions clog hundreds of mailboxes, including mine. Thanks.
* Do not duplicate something which has recently appeared.
The moderators don't always agree on what's acceptable and what's not.
If an article is rejected, you should receive a note from the
moderators saying why. These notes, and other discussions about the
running of sci.med.aids will be distributed on the aids-d mailing list
(see Q1.10 Discussing sci.med.aids moderation policies.').
Continue to:
My Books
