The Jews for Obama (J4O) mailing list is where JGAN members meet on-line to discuss and coordinate our grassroots activism. We share information, celebrate our daily successes, and plan our future efforts. JGAN is a community of friends as well as allies, so sometimes we chat about topics that aren’t directly related to work, just for the sake of getting to know each other better.

We also provide the Mideast-discussion mailing list for discussion of Mideast politics.

Mailing list participants are asked to keep in mind the following guidelines:

1. Remember that anyone can subscribe. Don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want published on the front page of tomorrow’s New York Times.
2. Be polite and civil. Name-calling, insults and the like, whether they are directed at other JGAN members, politicians, media figures, or anyone else, are not acceptable.
   This does not preclude vocal condemnation of reprehensible acts and the figures who engage in them, e.g., blatant anti-Semitism and supporting or engaging in terrorism.
3. Underlying our efforts is a belief in the value of our Jewish heritage and the importance of the well-being and security of the State of Israel. Attacks against Judaism, anti-Semitic statements, and attacks against the legitimacy of the Jewish State are not acceptable.
4. Non-Jewish proselytizing, including devotional quotes from the Christian Bible, is not permitted.
   Messages pertaining to Messianic Judaism, a.k.a., “Jews for Jesus”, are not permitted.
5. We are a pluralistic community whose members range across the spectra of Jewish denominations, beliefs, and observance. Our goal is to unite on common ground. Share your own beliefs in a respectful way, and treat with respect the beliefs shared by others.
   Maintaining respectful dialogue is especially important when discussing controversial issues such as (on the Mideast-discussion list) the best way for Israel to ensure its long-term security.
6. Please adhere to general standards of “netiquette”, including:
   1. Use a meaningful Subject line. When you change the subject in a reply, change your Subject line to match. Try to remember to remove extra “RE:” prefixes.
   2. Don’t include the previous message if your reply can be understood without it. Otherwise, take the time to “trim” the previous message so that only what’s needed for context is included.
   3. Consider whether a reply needs to go to the whole list or can instead be sent only to the person to whom you are responding. Note that on J4O, the “Reply” command in your mail reader will reply to the author of a message; to reply to the entire list, use “Reply all”.
   4. Do not publish private email without its author’s permission.
7. Please remember that attachments don’t work on the J4O mailing list. Only the body of your mailing list submissions will be preserved. If you try to paste an image into an email message to the mailing list in your message rather than linking to an image on a Web site, it won’t work. If you try to forward an email message to the mailing list as an attachment rather than inline in the body of your email, it won’t work. If you try to forward a Word document, or a spreadsheet, or a PDF file, or whatever, it won’t work. To share an image, send a link to the page containing the image or a link to the image itself on a Web server. To forward an email message, tell your mail client to forward it inline in the body of your email. To forward a file, send a link to where the file is on a Web site, or use a service like http://YouSendIt.com/ to make it available for mailing list members to download. (Note that attachments do work on the Mideast-discussion list.)
8. Try to keep your tone positive and up-beat. A certain amount of negativity is inevitable; it’s impossible to run a successful grassroots campaign without ever discussing the shortcomings of one’s opponents. Nevertheless, such discussions should be kept polite, civil and based on facts rather than on rumor or innuendo.
9. Send complaints about inappropriate content to the moderators, not the mailing list. When action is necessary, the moderators prefer for it to be driven by the expressed will of the group, so please speak up if you think something is wrong.
10. Send feedback about this policy to the moderators, not the mailing list. Most members of the group do not care to discuss what we should be discussing, so please honor their wishes and keep it off of the mailing list.
11. Non-Jews are welcome to join J40 and participate in discussion, as long as they adhere to these guidelines. Just as a Jew visiting a church or mosque would refrain from saying or doing things which would offend his hosts, non-Jews visiting our on-line community should remember that they are guests and behave as such.

Members who violate these guidelines are asked by the moderators to refrain from doing so. Additional violations lead to active moderation, i.e., these members’ submissions are held for review by the moderators rather than distributed directly to the mailing list, and inappropriate submissions are discarded. In extreme cases, members who repeatedly violate the guidelines may be removed from the group.