1 _ _ ____ _ 2 ___| | | | _ \| | 3 / __| | | | |_) | | 4 | (__| |_| | _ <| |___ 5 \___|\___/|_| \_\_____| 6 7MAIL ETIQUETTE 8 9 1. About the lists 10 1.1 Mailing Lists 11 1.2 Netiquette 12 1.3 Do Not Mail a Single Individual 13 1.4 Subscription Required 14 1.5 Moderation of new posters 15 1.6 Handling trolls and spam 16 1.7 How to unsubscribe 17 18 2. Sending mail 19 2.1 Reply or New Mail 20 2.2 Reply to the List 21 2.3 Use a Sensible Subject 22 2.4 Do Not Top-Post 23 2.5 HTML is not for mails 24 2.6 Quoting 25 2.7 Digest 26 2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem! 27 28============================================================================== 29 301. About the lists 31 32 1.1 Mailing Lists 33 34 The mailing lists we have are all listed and described at 35 http://curl.haxx.se/mail/ 36 37 Each mailing list is targeted to a specific set of users and subjects, 38 please use the one or the ones that suit you the most. 39 40 Each mailing list have hundreds up to thousands of readers, meaning that 41 each mail sent will be received and read by a very large amount of people. 42 People from various cultures, regions, religions and continents. 43 44 1.2 Netiquette 45 46 Netiquette is a common name for how to behave on the internet. Of course, in 47 each particular group and subculture there will be differences in what is 48 acceptable and what is considered good manners. 49 50 This document outlines what we in the cURL project considers to be good 51 etiquette, and primarily this focus on how to behave on and how to use our 52 mailing lists. 53 54 1.3 Do Not Mail a Single Individual 55 56 Many people send one question to one person. One person gets many mails, and 57 there is only one person who can give you a reply. The question may be 58 something that other people are also wanting to ask. These other people have 59 no way to read the reply, but to ask the one person the question. The one 60 person consequently gets overloaded with mail. 61 62 If you really want to contact an individual and perhaps pay for his or her 63 services, by all means go ahead, but if it's just another curl question, 64 take it to a suitable list instead. 65 66 1.4 Subscription Required 67 68 All curl mailing lists require that you are subscribed to allow a mail to go 69 through to all the subscribers. 70 71 If you post without being subscribed (or from a different mail address than 72 the one you are subscribed with), your mail will simply be silently 73 discarded. You have to subscribe first, then post. 74 75 The reason for this unfortunate and strict subscription policy is of course 76 to stop spam from pestering the lists. 77 78 1.5 Moderation of new posters 79 80 Several of the curl mailing lists automatically make all posts from new 81 subscribers require moderation. This means that after you've subscribed and 82 send your first mail to a list, that mail will not be let through to the 83 list until a mailing list administrator has verified that it is OK and 84 permits it to get posted. 85 86 Once a first post has been made that proves the sender is actually talking 87 about curl-related subjects, the moderation "flag" will be switched off and 88 future posts will go through without being moderated. 89 90 The reason for this moderation policy is that we do suffer from spammers who 91 actually subscribe and send spam to our lists. 92 93 1.6 Handling trolls and spam 94 95 Despite our good intentions and hard work to keep spam off the lists and to 96 maintain a friendly and positive atmosphere, there will be times when spam 97 and or trolls get through. 98 99 Troll - "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages 100 in an online community" 101 102 Spam - "use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk 103 messages" 104 105 No matter what, we NEVER EVER respond to trolls or spammers on the list. If 106 you believe the list admin should do something particular, contact him/her 107 off-list. The subject will be taken care of as good as possible to prevent 108 repeated offenses, but responding on the list to such messages never lead to 109 anything good and only puts the light even more on the offender: which was 110 the entire purpose of it getting to the list in the first place. 111 112 Don't feed the trolls! 113 114 1.7 How to unsubscribe 115 116 You unsubscribe the same way you subscribed in the first place. You go to 117 the page for the particular mailing list you're subscribed to and you enter 118 your email address and password and press the unsubscribe button. 119 120 Also, this information is included in the headers of every mail that is sent 121 out to all curl related mailing lists and there's footer in each mail that 122 links to the "admin" page on which you can unsubscribe and change other 123 options. 124 125 You NEVER EVER email the mailing list requesting someone else to get you off 126 the list. 127 128 1292. Sending mail 130 131 2.1 Reply or New Mail 132 133 Please do not reply to an existing message as a short-cut to post a message 134 to the lists. 135 136 Many mail programs and web archivers use information within mails to keep 137 them together as "threads", as collections of posts that discuss a certain 138 subject. If you don't intend to reply on the same or similar subject, don't 139 just hit reply on an existing mail and change subject, create a new mail. 140 141 2.2 Reply to the List 142 143 When replying to a message from the list, make sure that you do "group 144 reply" or "reply to all", and not just reply to the author of the single 145 mail you reply to. 146 147 We're actively discouraging replying back to the single person by setting 148 the Reply-To: field in outgoing mails back to the mailing list address, 149 making it harder for people to mail the author only by mistake. 150 151 2.3 Use a Sensible Subject 152 153 Please use a subject of the mail that makes sense and that is related to the 154 contents of your mail. It makes it a lot easier to find your mail afterwards 155 and it makes it easier to track mail threads and topics. 156 157 2.4 Do Not Top-Post 158 159 If you reply to a message, don't use top-posting. Top-posting is when you 160 write the new text at the top of a mail and you insert the previous quoted 161 mail conversation below. It forces users to read the mail in a backwards 162 order to properly understand it. 163 164 This is why top posting is so bad: 165 166 A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read 167 text. 168 Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? 169 A: Top-posting. 170 Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? 171 172 Apart from the screwed up read order (especially when mixed together in a 173 thread when someone responds using the mandated bottom-posting style), it 174 also makes it impossible to quote only parts of the original mail. 175 176 When you reply to a mail. You let the mail client insert the previous mail 177 quoted. Then you put the cursor on the first line of the mail and you move 178 down through the mail, deleting all parts of the quotes that don't add 179 context for your comments. When you want to add a comment you do so, inline, 180 right after the quotes that relate to your comment. Then you continue 181 downwards again. 182 183 When most of the quotes have been removed and you've added your own words, 184 you're done! 185 186 2.5 HTML is not for mails 187 188 Please switch off those HTML encoded messages. You can mail all those funny 189 mails to your friends. We speak plain text mails. 190 191 2.6 Quoting 192 193 Quote as little as possible. Just enough to provide the context you cannot 194 leave out. A lengthy description can be found here: 195 196 http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html 197 198 2.7 Digest 199 200 We allow subscribers to subscribe to the "digest" version of the mailing 201 lists. A digest is a collection of mails lumped together in one single mail. 202 203 Should you decide to reply to a mail sent out as a digest, there are two 204 things you MUST consider if you really really cannot subscribe normally 205 instead: 206 207 Cut off all mails and chatter that is not related to the mail you want to 208 reply to. 209 210 Change the subject name to something sensible and related to the subject, 211 preferably even the actual subject of the single mail you wanted to reply to 212 213 2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem! 214 215 Many people mail questions to the list, people spend some of their time and 216 make an effort in providing good answers to these questions. 217 218 If you are the one who asks, please consider responding once more in case 219 one of the hints was what solved your problems. The guys who write answers 220 feel good to know that they provided a good answer and that you fixed the 221 problem. Far too often, the person who asked the question is never heard of 222 again, and we never get to know if he/she is gone because the problem was 223 solved or perhaps because the problem was unsolvable! 224 225 Getting the solution posted also helps other users that experience the same 226 problem(s). They get to see (possibly in the web archives) that the 227 suggested fixes actually has helped at least one person. 228 229