Welcome post

[Salil Bijur]

Hi,

The Red Tape Cabal is a mailing list for like-minded civil servants for discussions on any topic relevant to our work life and issues concerning society and nation at large.
"Red Tape" because it indicates the bureaucracy which we work in. It is not a pleasant term to be proud of, so it is to be taken in the sense of irony and a stark reminder to the challenges around us.
"Cabal" because discussions here will be confidential and forwarding messages outside the group is strictly prohibited.

Rules:

Eligibility and nomination:

1. This list is invitation-only. 
2. New members will be added only on the recommendation of an active list member. 
3. The member should be a serving Indian civil servant who the nominator knows personally.
4. If you're an active list member, you get to nominate one person every two months. If one of your nominee doesn't join, you can get another shot. This means you need to think carefully about whom you want to pick. Pick someone you trust with the having high integrity, honesty and courage.
5. Nomination is not automatic approval, however. I may (rarely) reject a nomination.
   
6. All new members are required to post a short intro to the list after joining. It doesn't need to be an exhaustive autobiography, but just enough to give an idea about your life, interests, etc. This will ensure that all members know each other and there is no anonymity.
   

Content:

1. There is no formal list of topics for discussion. Feel free to start threads on whatever topics you find interesting which you believe would be of interest to others.
2. Members may share snippets of work life and seek advice or suggestions from other members. However, do not treat the list as your blog with daily updates. 
3. Let us all share as much knowledge as possible and become collectively smarter in the process.

Posting mails:

1. Keep the list as noise-free as possible.
2. Please trim your replies, especially if you are quoting a long thread. 
3. Please also avoid top-posting where a contextual in-line reply would work better. See: http://www.river.com/users/share/etiquette/
4. Keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. Opinions are welcome, but posts with only smileys, "heh", "thanks", "great!", "LOL", "awesome!", "me too" etc. are noise and to be avoided. If a post is better sent only to the original author than to the entire list, please do so. A prime example of this is birthday wishes.
5. Please maintain a civil tone in all discussions. Disagreements with opinions are expected and welcome, but personal attacks are not. 
6. Do not spam. Do not send jokes to the list. Do NOT send any silly email forwards (punishment is instant removal from list.)
7. The posts on this list are the copyright of the individual posters. If you want to quote someone, you have to take their permission. There is no point linking to the web archives of this list since it's visible to members-only.
8. Use meaningful subject lines. It helps people decide if they want to follow a thread if they come home and suddenly find a 20-post thread in their mail. And it helps searching archives in the future a lot easier. If a thread has drifted very far away from the original topic, consider switching the subject line.

Secrecy:

1. Please don't forward list mail outside the group. The group is private, and some information is revealed in the belief that it is for the consumption of the list members alone, not for the larger public.
2. As far as possible, avoid discussing the contents of this group with non-members.
3. Don't cross-post: Cross-posting is when you send an email to one list, then CC other lists, and possibly other people. Short version: it creates hell. For people who are not members of all the lists CC'd, it just gets them involved in discussions they didn't sign up for. For people who *are* members of all the lists, it floods their inboxes with multiple copies of all the mail. For people who are on none of the lists, it pisses them off with mail from people they may not know, with discussions they didn't ask for. 

Disputes and Arbitration: If there's a dispute, my word is final!

Thanks and welcome again!

Salil