Roll Call Editorial Policies

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Rationale

The survey forms recorded in the rec.toys.lego Roll Call were, with a few exceptions, all posted to the rec.toys.lego newsgroup on Usenet, presumably to announce the data in them to the large, anonymous community that reads the newsgroup. (The exceptions are forms emailed to me or to other people from authors explicitly asking to be included in the public Roll Call.) What I have done in this archive is to try to list the forms in a way that is reasonably accessible to the audience for which they were intended. The major difference from the newsgroup articles is that these listings are more persistent than the articles on most people's news server, and one doesn't need to search Deja News to find them.

Other minor differences are that I eventually delete old survey forms when their owners post updated forms, and I occasionally edit the submitted forms. I try to limit my edits to such things as left-justifying the category headings in the forms, deleting what appear to be automatic .sig files appended to the message (at least those parts that don't appear relevant to LEGO® ), and on rare occasions correcting an apparent typographical error. (I try not to ``correct'' what might be a stylistic choice; if someone posts all their data in lower case, I leave it that way.)

Still, while I haven't had any substantial complaints about the archive, I will try to oblige anyone who is unhappy with their listing, as described in the following sections.

Getting Off the List

To have your survey data removed completely from the published archive, simply send email to me at karr@shore.net . I'll remove the data as soon as I conveniently can. (If I'm on vacation or have trouble accessing my account, it may take a while.) Obviously, I can't do anything about copies that other people have downloaded already.

Correcting Your Data in the List

If you submitted one of the survey forms listed in the archive, one simple way to correct the data under your name is to post a new completed form to the newsgroup, rec.toys.lego , under a Subject heading that mentions the words ``Roll Call.'' I save these articles as they appear, and every once in a while add them to the archive, at which time I try to delete any older data submitted by the same people. This is the method I prefer. Of course, if your complaint is with my style of editing, this method probably won't work.

If you have a more urgent need to correct some faulty or obsolete data (I don't consider your acquisition of another 2000 LEGO® bricks ``urgent,'' but other changes might be), or if you think I might not update the archive correctly (for example if your name or user account changed dramatically), feel free to send me email at karr@shore.net . (For example, I've gotten at least two pieces of email reporting change in marital status that led me to take some special action.) Alternatively, post the correction to rec.toys.lego under a Subject heading that includes the words ``Roll Call,'' and make it clear what you're correcting, and I may pick it up. (I verified at least one change of user account this way.)

To complain about my editing, send me email.

Getting On the List

The classic way to get on this list is to respond to one of the calls for Roll Call entries on the newsgroup rec.toys.lego . You can also simply fill out a recent edition of the Roll Call survey form and post it spontaneously, but try to include the words ``Roll Call'' in the Subject line so I won't miss it.

It might happen that you post your survey form, and then I release a new edition of the archive, and your form isn't there. You can post your form again after a while, or email it to me at karr@shore.net . But adding new forms to the archive, or even adding a lot of data to an old form, is not trivial, and I like to save up a large number of new forms and do them all at once. This can delay the update a few months. I apologize for the delay, but remember I'm an unpaid volunteer performing an unimportant job. (After all, no one will go to bed hungry tonight because I didn't keep the Roll Call up to date.)


Last updated Sun Apr 4 21:28:17 EDT 1999 .

This page by David A. Karr / karr@shore.net