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 17 2. Sending mail 18 2.1 Reply or New Mail 19 2.2 Reply to the List 20 2.3 Use a Sensible Subject 21 2.4 Do Not Top-Post 22 2.5 HTML is not for mails 23 2.6 Quoting 24 2.7 Digest 25 2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem! 26 27============================================================================== 28 291. About the lists 30 31 1.1 Mailing Lists 32 33 The mailing lists we have are all listed and described at 34 http://curl.haxx.se/mail/ 35 36 Each mailing list is targeted to a specific set of users and subjects, 37 please use the one or the ones that suit you the most. 38 39 Each mailing list have hundreds up to thousands of readers, meaning that 40 each mail sent will be received and read by a very large amount of people. 41 People from various cultures, regions, religions and continents. 42 43 1.2 Netiquette 44 45 Netiquette is a common name for how to behave on the internet. Of course, in 46 each particular group and subculture there will be differences in what is 47 acceptable and what is considered good manners. 48 49 This document outlines what we in the cURL project considers to be good 50 etiquette, and primarily this focus on how to behave on and how to use our 51 mailing lists. 52 53 1.3 Do Not Mail a Single Individual 54 55 Many people send one question to one person. One person gets many mails, and 56 there is only one person who can give you a reply. The question may be 57 something that other people are also wanting to ask. These other people have 58 no way to read the reply, but to ask the one person the question. The one 59 person consequently gets overloaded with mail. 60 61 If you really want to contact an individual and perhaps pay for his or her's 62 services, by all means go ahead, but if it's just another curl question, 63 take it to a suitable list instead. 64 65 1.4 Subscription Required 66 67 All curl mailing lists require that you are subscribed to allow a mail to go 68 through to all the subscribers. 69 70 If you post without being subscribed (or from a different mail address than 71 the one you are subscribed with), your mail will simply be silently 72 discarded. You have to subscribe first, then post. 73 74 The reason for this unfortunate and strict subscription policy is of course 75 to stop spam from pestering the lists. 76 77 1.5 Moderation of new posters 78 79 Several of the curl mailing lists automatically make all posts from new 80 subscribers require moderation. This means that after you've subscribed and 81 send your first mail to a list, that mail will not be let through to the 82 list until a mailing list administrator has verified that it is OK and 83 permits it to get posted. 84 85 Once a first post has been made that proves the sender is actually talking 86 about curl-related subjects, the moderation "flag" will be switched off and 87 future posts will go through without being moderated. 88 89 The reason for this moderation policy is that we do suffer from spammers who 90 actually subscribe and send spam to our lists. 91 92 1.6 Handling trolls and spam 93 94 Despite our good intensions and hard work to keep spam off the lists and to 95 maintain a friendly and positive atmosphere, there will be times when spam 96 and or trolls get through. 97 98 Troll - "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages 99 in an online community" 100 101 Spam - "use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk 102 messages" 103 104 No matter what, we NEVER EVER respond to trolls or spammers on the list. If 105 you believe the list admin should do something particular, contact him/her 106 off-list. The subject will be taken care of as good as possible to prevent 107 repeated offences, but responding on the list to such messages never lead to 108 anything good and only puts the light even more on the offender: which was 109 the entire purpose of it getting to the list in the first place. 110 111 Don't feed the trolls! 112 113 1142. Sending mail 115 116 2.1 Reply or New Mail 117 118 Please do not reply to an existing message as a short-cut to post a message 119 to the lists. 120 121 Many mail programs and web archivers use information within mails to keep 122 them together as "threads", as collections of posts that discuss a certain 123 subject. If you don't intend to reply on the same or similar subject, don't 124 just hit reply on an existing mail and change subject, create a new mail. 125 126 2.2 Reply to the List 127 128 When replying to a message from the list, make sure that you do "group 129 reply" or "reply to all", and not just reply to the author of the single 130 mail you reply to. 131 132 We're actively discouraging replying back to the single person by setting 133 the Reply-To: field in outgoing mails back to the mailing list address, 134 making it harder for people to mail the author only by mistake. 135 136 2.3 Use a Sensible Subject 137 138 Please use a subject of the mail that makes sense and that is related to the 139 contents of your mail. It makes it a lot easier to find your mail afterwards 140 and it makes it easier to track mail threads and topics. 141 142 2.4 Do Not Top-Post 143 144 If you reply to a message, don't use top-posting. Top-posting is when you 145 write the new text at the top of a mail and you insert the previous quoted 146 mail conversation below. It forces users to read the mail in a backwards 147 order to properly understand it. 148 149 This is why top posting is so bad: 150 151 A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read 152 text. 153 Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? 154 A: Top-posting. 155 Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? 156 157 Apart from the screwed up read order (especially when mixed together in a 158 thread when some responds doing the mandaded bottom-posting style), it also 159 makes it impossible to quote only parts of the original mail. 160 161 When you reply to a mail. You let the mail client insert the previous mail 162 quoted. Then you put the cursor on the first line of the mail and you move 163 down through the mail, deleting all parts of the quotes that don't add 164 context for your comments. When you want to add a comment you do so, inline, 165 right after the quotes that relate to your comment. Then you continue 166 downwards again. 167 168 When most of the quotes have been removed and you've added your own words, 169 you're done! 170 171 2.5 HTML is not for mails 172 173 Please switch off those HTML encoded messages. You can mail all those funny 174 mails to your friends. We speak plain text mails. 175 176 2.6 Quoting 177 178 Quote as little as possible. Just enough to provide the context you cannot 179 leave out. A lengthy description can be found here: 180 181 http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html 182 183 2.7 Digest 184 185 We allow subscribers to subscribe to the "digest" version of the mailing 186 lists. A digest is a collection of mails lumped together in one single mail. 187 188 Should you decide to reply to a mail sent out as a digest, there are two 189 things you MUST consider if you really really cannot subscribe normally 190 instead: 191 192 Cut off all mails and chatter that is not related to the mail you want to 193 reply to. 194 195 Change the subject name to something sensible and related to the subject, 196 preferably even the actual subject of the single mail you wanted to reply to 197 198 2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem! 199 200 Many people mail questions to the list, people spend some of their time and 201 make an effort in providing good answers to these questions. 202 203 If you are the one who asks, please consider responding once more in case 204 one of the hints was what solved your problems. The guys who write answers 205 feel good to know that they provided a good answer and that you fixed the 206 problem. Far too often, the person who asked the question is never heard of 207 again, and we never get to know if he/she is gone because the problem was 208 solved or perhaps because the problem was unsolvable! 209 210 Getting the solution posted also helps other users that experience the same 211 problem(s). They get to see (possibly in the web archives) that the 212 suggested fixes actually has helped at least one person. 213 214