Mountain Forum has policies that regulate the flow of information and discussions through the discussion lists. The rationale to have these policies and regulate the discussions is to maintain a safe, comfortable, and constructive forum for online exchange of information on mountain issues. The discussion list policies of the Mountain Forum are to encourage discussions on issues that are relevant to equitable and ecologically sustainable mountain development.

As a first step to keep the discussions focused, a team of people across the world moderates all discussion lists. All email messages are approved by a moderator who reviews all postings. This is a value-added function to keep the discussion focused, free of junk and spam mail, and other unwanted messages for members. The moderator at the secretariat supports and coordinates all discussions lists and will respond to any inquiries and/or direct them to the appropriate discussion list.

General Guidelines for a Moderated Discussion List

Postings that endanger the lives or well-being of an individual or group; postings that are clearly not relevant to the purpose of the discussion, postings that are clearly profane, defamatory, or libellous as determined by a moderator will not be posted.
Copyrighted materials may not be posted without permission of the copyright holder. This is the responsibility of the person posting the material on the discussion lists. However, members are welcome to provide a URL, or a summary (in your own words) for dissemination to the list.
Personal, short, or one-line messages such as "bravo" or "thanks for the info" are discouraged for posting on the list.
Blanket announcements, and form letters that are sent to numerous discussion lists will not be posted unless the original sender provides an introductory statement explaining the relevance of their message to mountains.
Moderators will not post any material they see as general internet spam, junk or commercial mail.
Moderators will provide an explanation to the sender in case his/her message is not posted to a discussion list.
Since many members are from developing countries and pay per byte, moderators try to limit the size of postings to less than 25 kilobytes.
The discussion list software does not support any email attachments. Articles for review, longer messages, and library submissions can be sent to moderator[at]mtnforum[dot]org and the article may be placed on the Mountain Forum website in our Online Library.

Beating Spam: Identifying the Source of Each Message

Spam and junk emails received by email account holders have become a serious problem over the last couple of years. To address this problem, Mountain Forum has instituted a system by which the source of each message is identified by adding standard prefixes to the subject lines of each posting. Hence, by simply looking at the subject line, members will know that the message in their inbox is from Mountain Forum and is not spam or unsolicited email.

The format of these prefixes in the subject line is [mf-name of discussion list]. For example, a message posted to the mf-africa discussion list will have in the subject line the prefix [mf-africa].

Classification According to Content of Postings Discussion Lists

Mountain Forum also uses a standardised format for classifying the content of each message by placing it in the subject line for each posting. For example, a message which is about a job opportunity and is being sent out to the mf-global discussion list will have the subject line as:

[mf-global] Vacancy: Research Assistant position at ICIMOD

This has been done to help members know better what type of content they should expect in each message. This way, if the content does not seem particularly relevant or interesting, it can be ignored without having to open the message.

The list of words being currently used and what each implies is given below: