Posting guidelines for political candidates, staff and supporters

 

The Cleveland Park Listserv is Washington, DC's largest neighborhood email list, with over 4,400 members. We're also a very busy place in cyberspace. For these two reasons, we've developed this set of guidelines for political candidates, staff and supporters. Before you post to the list, it's a good idea to review the list's general rules at www.adlerbooks.com/cprules.html.

1. Crossposts (messages sent to more than one list), press releases, and campaign literature are not right for the Cleveland Park Listserv. If you try to crosspost your political messages on a regular basis, the moderators will put you on can't-post status -- that makes our job easier.

2. It's okay to announce campaign events in the neighborhood. The Cleveland Park Listserv's boundaries are listed at www.adlerbooks.com/cprules.html.  Just keep your announcement short, sweet and low on hype. (And we realize that you can't completely rewrite an event announcement just for our list.)

3. We encourage political discussion. With that in mind, it's much better to post a message about an issue than about the candidate's qualifications. Think discussion, not advertising.  Try to keep your message concise.

4. We prefer messages from the candidate, rather than from the campaign. All messages need to be signed by the individual who wrote and sent it. Again, we like to encourage debate and discussion, rather than have the list used as a bulletin board or kiosk.

5. DO NOT harvest or collect list members' email addresses. List members obviously don't like being spammed and our rules require that we ban anyone who collects or harvests list members' email addresses. We've discovered that once somebody's done that --spammed list members-- it's very hard to undo that reputation, and the risk of alienating 4,400+ voters is very real.

6. In the interest of full disclosure, if you work or volunteer for a campaign, you must identify yourself as such.

One way to think of the Cleveland Park Listserv is as a letters-to-the-editors section of a newspaper, rather than as a street corner where flyers are distributed. If you have any questions about whether or not a particular message is suitable for the Cleveland Park Listserv, feel free to ask us. You can reach the moderators at cleveland-park-owner@yahoogroups.com.

Sincerely,


Bill Adler
Peggy Robin
List Owners
www.cleveland-park.com