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MAIL-ETIQUETTE: how to behave

Browse Source 
This is a new documentation for the source tree. This information has
been present since a long time at
http://curl.haxx.se/mail/etiquette.html but now it is put into a plain
text version too for wider distribution. The web version will be
automatically generated from this source document.
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Stenberg 2011-03-22 09:20:42 +01:00
parent 34ef39015e
commit 0addc57188
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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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@ -16,7 +16,8 @@ CLEANFILES = $(GENHTMLPAGES) $(PDFPAGES)
EXTRA_DIST = MANUAL BUGS CONTRIBUTE FAQ FEATURES INTERNALS SSLCERTS \
README.win32 RESOURCES TODO TheArtOfHttpScripting THANKS VERSIONS \
KNOWN_BUGS BINDINGS $(man_MANS) $(HTMLPAGES) HISTORY INSTALL \
$(PDFPAGES) LICENSE-MIXING README.netware DISTRO-DILEMMA INSTALL.devcpp
$(PDFPAGES) LICENSE-MIXING README.netware DISTRO-DILEMMA INSTALL.devcpp \
MAIL-ETIQUETTE
MAN2HTML= roffit < $< >$@