Small Stuff Membership Policies

1] Small Stuff is about small stuff. In other words, the topic is dollhouse scale miniatures! Please include something about miniatures in each of your posts. Off topic replies should be sent privately to the person concerned, not to the Small Stuff list. If they are sent to Small Stuff, they will probably be rejected (your email will not appear).

This is a newsletter list dedicated to the discussion of dollhouse scale miniatures. If you want to post jokes, poems or recipes, please join other lists for that purpose. Several welcome these kinds of topics along with miniatures. MiniLists has many of them linked and described.

2] Small Stuff is a forum for polite communication between miniaturists. It is not a place to argue, accuse or berate. No forms of abuse, attacks, or 'flaming' will be tolerated (on list or off), and may result in immediate expulsion from Small Stuff.

3] Our mail program cannot accept Attachments. Our mail program will reject posts which include: Backgrounds, Stationary or Attachments.

4] Our advertising/promotion policy:

It is our desire that comments and posts to Small Stuff help build and encourage the "community spirit" of miniatures online. For this reason, we strongly discourage blatant advertising on Small Stuff except on Fridays (the Friday digest is called "Flipped Friday" and is dedicated to promotions and advertising).

Other than Fridays, no auction (i.e. eBay and the like) or advertising pitches are allowed on Small Stuff. Exception: When someone posts looking for an item, and you are offering just that item, then you can respond with that information, BUT you cannot ever post the price, or state that anything is discounted by a certain percentage, or that shipping is free, etc. -- even on Fridays. We have this policy so that we cannot be accused of being associated with price fixing in the miniatures industry.

If you sell through auctions, you can include your auction seller's link or web site link ONLY in your signature (unless it is a Flipped Friday post). You can also request that your eBay seller's link or your web site link be added to the Small Stuff Links.

Web site and photo album site owners may announce new site launches, and updates, on Fridays as well. Even if your post includes non-promotional information, it is going to be held until Friday, and appear in Friday's digest. The number of announcements of this type should be limited, and not used as a regular advertising tool.

People can, of course, on any day of the week, post when they have seen something on auction or a web site which they consider exceptional in some way -- as long as they are not the seller themselves. And of course, they may mention the prices and special offers, since they are not the seller. Please do not abuse this policy by frequently posting information about a friend or business partner's offerings.

We would prefer that you do not mention your Small Stuff membership in your auction or web site descriptions, since Small Stuff as a group is not in a position to guarantee or warrant anything. We will not mediate or intervene in online swaps or sales transactions.

Show Announcements: You are welcome to one show announcement prior to a show, and one follow-up after the show. Please keep both announcements brief, and refer to the show web site (if there is one) for details. Announcements may include admission prices but not vendor table rates. Workshop announcements may only include the name of the project, the teacher, and the dates/location (if they differ from the show).

5] Signatures are the non-message lines at the bottom of some email messages, usually containing a name or business name, and perhaps a location and the URL to a web site or photo album site. They are the unique way you "sign" your post. You can find information on how to automatically add a consistent signature to all your emails in the Help section of your mail program.

Out of consideration to those who read SS in digest form, we ask that you limit your signature to 4 lines maximum, with up to 80 characters and/or spaces per line. Please note that a space counts as a character and a blank line counts as a line. We also ask that you please limit slogans to miniature-related topics, avoiding political, religious, and personal statements or famous quotations which are not miniature related.

eBay sellers' URLs are typically quite long and with the 80-character per line limit may mean that your eBay link takes up two of your signature lines. You can get a "tiny" URL to replace your long eBay URL.

Here is an example of an acceptable signature:

Jane Miniaturelover
I brake for dollhouse shops!
http://SeeMyMinis.com
http://tinyurl.com/My_ebay_Page

Please note that if your signature is more than four lines of 80 characters, our mail program will reject your post.

6] Please do not post Virus Warnings to the list. Most of these are hoaxes. Once you have determined that it is not a hoax, please forward the warning privately to Anne at anne(a)gerdesdesign.com [replace (a) with @].

7] Small Stuff respects Copyrights. Please do not post offers (or requests) to copy articles, excerpts, patterns, or artwork in print or electronic form, unless you are the copyright holder for that work, or you have obtained permission from the copyright holder in advance of your offer.

Ownership of a post to SS, or to any other list or individual, no matter the content, belongs to the poster and is not to be copied, transmitted, etc without the person's permission.

In general, protected works may only be copied/shared under "fair use" which usually designates educators or librarians, and even then permission is required. Copyright protection is relevant regardless of whether the item copied is being offered for sale/profit, or for free. Information about copyrights pertaining to miniatures.

8] Our tips archive is comprised of tips posted by members. If you don't want tips you post to be archived, please put DON'T ARCHIVE in the email. Otherwise, the member's name will be archived with their tip. The member retains all copyright privileges to their own tips. (See #7).

9] Charitable Giving: From time to time the SS Board may decide to organize charitable mini-drives for worthy causes.

As a group we feel that it is important to support those in need and bring a small ray of hope into the lives of the unfortunate. In the past we have donated dollhouses and miniature items to children, and we prefer to continue in this way. If you are aware of a person or organization worthy of an organized group effort by the SS membership, please contact
smallstuff-owner@smallstuffarchives.com

The need will be substantiated before being solicited on Small Stuff.

If you send gifts or money to anyone in response to a tragedy or situation which has been mentioned on SS and which has not been verified by the SS Board, you do so at your own risk.