MAIL-ETIQUETTE: how to behave

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MAIL ETIQUETTE

 1. About the lists

  1.1 Netiquette

  1.2 Do Not Mail a Single Individual

  1.3 Subscription Required

  1.4 Moderation of new posters

 2. Sending mail

  2.1 Reply or New Mail

  2.2 Reply to the List

  2.3 Use a Sensible Subject

  2.4 Do Not Top-Post

  2.5 HTML is not for mails

  2.6 Quoting

  2.7 Digest

  2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem!

==============================================================================

1. About the lists

  1.1 Netiquette

  Netiquette is a common name for how to behave on the internet. Of course, in

  each particular group and subculture there will be differences in what is

  acceptable and what is considered good manners.

  This document outlines what we in the cURL project considers to be good

  etiquette, and primarily this focus on how to behave on and how to use our

  mailing lists.

  1.2 Do Not Mail a Single Individual

  Many people send one question to one person. One person gets many mails, and

  there is only one person who can give you a reply. The question may be

  something that other people are also wanting to ask. These other people have

  no way to read the reply, but to ask the one person the question. The one

  person consequently gets overloaded with mail.

  If you really want to contact an individual and perhaps pay for his or her's

  services, by all means go ahead, but if it's just another curl question,

  take it to a suitable list instead.

  1.3 Subscription Required

  All curl mailing lists require that you are subscribed to allow a mail to go

  through to all the subscribers.

  If you post without being subscribed (or from a different mail address than

  the one you are subscribed with), your mail will simply be silently

  discarded. You have to subscribe first, then post.

  The reason for this unfortunate and strict subscription policy is of course

  to stop spam from pestering the lists.

  1.4 Moderation of new posters

  Several of the curl mailing lists automatically make all posts from new

  subscribers require moderation. This means that after you've subscribed and

  send your first mail to a list, that mail will not be let through to the

  list until a mailing list administrator has verified that it is OK and

  permits it to get posted.

  Once a first post has been made that proves the sender is actually talking

  about curl-related subjects, the moderation "flag" will be switched off and

  future posts will go through without being moderated.

  The reason for this moderation policy is that we do suffer from spammers who

  actually subscribe and send spam to our lists.

2. Sending mail

  2.1 Reply or New Mail

  Please do not reply to an existing message as a short-cut to post a message

  to the lists.

  Many mail programs and web archivers use information within mails to keep

  them together as "threads", as collections of posts that discuss a certain

  subject. If you don't intend to reply on the same or similar subject, don't

  just hit reply on an existing mail and change subject, create a new mail.

  2.2 Reply to the List

  When replying to a message from the list, make sure that you do "group

  reply" or "reply to all", and not just reply to the author of the single

  mail you reply to.

  We're actively discouraging replying back to the single person by setting

  the Reply-To: field in outgoing mails back to the mailing list address,

  making it harder for people to mail the author only by mistake.

  2.3 Use a Sensible Subject

  Please use a subject of the mail that makes sense and that is related to the

  contents of your mail. It makes it a lot easier to find your mail afterwards

  and it makes it easier to track mail threads and topics.

  2.4 Do Not Top-Post

  If you reply to a message, don't use top-posting. Top-posting is when you

  write the new text at the top of a mail and you insert the previous quoted

  mail conversation below. It forces users to read the mail in a backwards

  order to properly understand it.

  This is why top posting is so bad:

      A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read

         text.

      Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

      A: Top-posting.

      Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

  Apart from the screwed up read order (especially when mixed together in a

  thread when some responds doing the mandaded bottom-posting style), it also

  makes it impossible to quote only parts of the original mail.

  When you reply to a mail. You let the mail client insert the previous mail

  quoted. Then you put the cursor on the first line of the mail and you move

  down through the mail, deleting all parts of the quotes that don't add

  context for your comments. When you want to add a comment you do so, inline,

  right after the quotes that relate to your comment. Then you continue

  downwards again.

  When most of the quotes have been removed and you've added your own words,

  you're done!

  2.5 HTML is not for mails

  Please switch off those HTML encoded messages. You can mail all those funny

  mails to your friends. We speak plain text mails.

  2.6 Quoting

  Quote as little as possible. Just enough to provide the context you cannot

  leave out. A lengthy description can be found here:

      http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

  2.7 Digest

  We allow subscribers to subscribe to the "digest" version of the mailing

  lists. A digest is a collection of mails lumped together in one single mail.

  Should you decide to reply to a mail sent out as a digest, there are two

  things you MUST consider if you really really cannot subscribe normally

  instead:

  Cut off all mails and chatter that is not related to the mail you want to

  reply to.

  Change the subject name to something sensible and related to the subject,

  preferably even the actual subject of the single mail you wanted to reply to

  2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem!

  Many people mail questions to the list, people spend some of their time and

  make an effort in providing good answers to these questions.

  If you are the one who asks, please consider responding once more in case

  one of the hints was what solved your problems. The guys who write answers

  feel good to know that they provided a good answer and that you fixed the

  problem. Far too often, the person who asked the question is never heard of

  again, and we never get to know if he/she is gone because the problem was

  solved or perhaps because the problem was unsolvable!

  Getting the solution posted also helps other users that experience the same

  problem(s). They get to see (possibly in the web archives) that the

  suggested fixes actually has helped at least one person.

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