I updated the Netiquette page this morning to address some recent issues
involving signatures, name calling, vulgarity, perceived threats, and
when it's appropriate to mention an auction on the list. Some of these
are good general netiquette guidelines; others are specific to the Low
End Mac family of email lists.
Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with this information.
Thanks!
Dan the listmom
updated 2001:07:15
There are informal rules of the Internet which are termed netiquette to
help people use proper etiquette within this form of communication. Some
examples of poor netiquette are not signing messages, unsubscribing to
the posting address instead of the administrative address, or TYPING IN
ALL CAPS (which is considered yelling). This is a dynamic environment and
netiquette is changing rapidly.
I can't say it much better than this: ...my goal here is to educate
people who participate in mailing lists, since only by improving our list
manners will mailing lists continue to become increasingly pleasant and
useful. (Adam C. Engst, TidBITS #480.)
Some informal rules for the Low End Mac family of mail lists:
Remember that replies automatically go to the list, not the just the
person who posted the message. You need to change the to: address to
respond to an individual. (Some other lists, such as Mac-Mgrs and our
Swap list, work just the opposite way. On those lists, a reply goes to
the original sender by default, not to the list.)
Never send attachments to the list. An attachment may contain a virus,
may be in a format others cannot use, may not make it through some mail
gateways, makes the message bigger, and will bog down both the list
server and the mail server.
- Many of today's email programs send styled text attachments by default.
You must turn HTML and other styled text off to post to the list (see
#3).
- Large enough attachments or messages will be rejected. (I've set a
ceiling
of 10 KB per posting.)
- Instead of sending an attachment to the list, offer to email it
directly
to those who request it.
Don't send styled text or HTML files; only send plain text. Style text
may or may not come through as an attachment, but it is very difficult to
read in a plain text email client. Styled text is especially troublesome
in digests. The list server is set to reject anything except plain text.
(I routinely throw out any email I receive that comes in only as an
attachment -- if you can't take the time to send it as plain text, I
won't take the time to read it.)
Style your posting -- ASCII style.
- Put a blank line between paragraphs.
- Put a blank line between what you are quoting and what you are writing.
- Clearly mark quoted sections. Most email programs do this by putting
or in front of each line of quoted material.
Don't use PGP encryption on your messages. A lot of people (probably
most) can't even use it.
Please quote only the relevant portion of messages you respond to -- and
please quote some of the original message so others know what you're
responding to.
You shouldn't have to wade through gobs of extraneous stuff to get to
the meat of the message. You should include just enough to provide a
context for the message and no more. (Peter Kimble, my high school CS
teacher, now gives his students the rule of thumb that at least half of
the lines in an email message should be their own.) If you must include
the whole message that you are replying to, include it after your
response. (From A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email, Kaitlin Duck
Sherwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.webfoot.com/advice/email.top.html.)
Quoting sparingly does require manual work, since most email programs
automatically quote the original message in replies. But failing to edit
the original wastes everyone's time and bandwidth. (Adam C. Engst,
TidBITS #480.)
Please keep me too messages off the list; these are best sent
privately, if at all.
Let sleeping threads lie. If it's been over a week since the last posting
in a thread, consider it dead and buried.
When asking a question, please list relevant information regarding
hardware, software, and version of the Mac OS involved.
Change the subject line when the subject of the thread changes.
When responding to a digest post, be sure to change the subject to match
that of the original message. The list server is set to reject replies to
the digest otherwise.
You can wander into other Mac-related topics, but try to limit discussion
to Mac-related topics (politics, religion, and a lot of other things are
off topic as far as Mac lists are concerned). Always treat others
courteously.
Signature lines
- Please keep your signature concise. Six lines or less is best.
- Many email clients wrap text at 80 characters, so check that your
signature won't wrap badly because of this.
- Taglines should be clearly separated from the body of the email and
should
come after your name.
-
