> Mail which goes through is "blind carbon copied"
> (BCC'd) to everyone on the list (so you can't see the list of
> recipients), with [Peterboro] added to the subject line if its not
> already there, so that its easy to sort when you receive it.
Unless something has changed *VERY* recently with Mailman, that is
most-definitely not the case. Bcc'd replies are frowned upon, and mailing
lists generally do not resort to using them. The list management software
itself will re-address an outgoing mail sent to the list to each
recipient. At no time is a Bcc: field used to send mail, at least not with
Mailman (which you're using to manage this list). I would consider any
mailing list software that did so, as broken.
> The third thing to remember is that all this stuff gets archived, and
> even before that gets sent to lots of people and therefore sits on lots
> of mailservers waiting to be read. "Quoting" parts of a conversation
> which are not relevant to your reply just adds to the volume of wasted
> data taking up space, generally slowing everything down.
The antithesis to proper quoting, is excessive quoting... leaving the
previous 20 replies to an email in the body, when you reply with a
1-sentence response. Cut EVERYTHING out of the reply that isn't directly
relevant, INCLUDING the mailing list footer, and then send on to others.
Nothing hurts worse than seeing a 52k email come through on a PDA or
cellphone with a 1 sentence reply sitting at the bottom of 100 scrolled
pages of useless previous banter.
> Fourth: Most people read email as they do books; top to bottom.
I like to say that people read email like they have an in-person
conversation, back and forth, collaborating and conversing. A book
generally is read chapter to chapter, without a break. The next break
comes at the next chapter, and that's generally frowned upon in emails
(see excessive quoting above).
> Since we've established that the only quoted material is just what's
> needed to give context, it makes sense to put that above the reply:
[snip]
I prefer this one:
Not this way
> What is the right way to quote message text?
or:
Who's there?
> Knock knock
> Similarly you should be careful about editing someone-else's words
> that you're quoting - but its generally OK to reformat it if
> necessary. If it makes sense to paraphrase what someone said
> rather than quote it directly, then do so
I see this quite a bit on the Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia lists that
I'm on, where they are VERY high traffic lists, and people are misquoted
all the time in the confusing shuffle of inter/overlapping threads.
As a rule, NEVER edit someone else's words, and never "selectively delete"
parts of what someone said to suit your retort. If its a mailing list, the
original message will be out there for comparison anyway, and the original
person being plagarized will probably call you on it. If you need to
rewrap the text in the reply, do so, but do not EVER edit the words of
someone else, including spelling or punctuation corrections.
> particularly if you have a good excuse (English not your
> first language, dyslexia, blind/partially sighted, etc). To worry about
> split infinitives or other silly language nonsense is the remit of other
> mailing lists, not this one. But again: if people can't easily read what
> you're saying then they won't, and you've just wasted your time typing
it.
Communication is a two-way street. You need to make sure you are saying
what you intend other people to hear, AND you need to make sure your words
are conveyed in a point that the listener can easily understand. Just
because you speak perfectly-articulated Spanish, doesn't mean your German
audience will understand you. Likewise with technical jargon and other
things. Talk at the level of your audience, not down to them.
> A big > "signature" (anything you automatically tag on to the end of
> every email) is very likely not "on topic" and should be removed if
> possible, although a small signature is useful to give your emails
> some "personality" which makes it easier for people to recognise
> each other.
The general and accepted rule, is 3 lines of .signature, total. 4 is
probably acceptable, but 8 or some large ascii animation, is not.
> Eighth: Not everyone uses your email client, so fancy fonts etc likely
> look a complete mess to other people. In fact there is a general rule
> that you should only ever send text to a mailing list (no
> attachments/images, no fancy fonts/colours/etc).
Another point to mention: Keep the HTML on port 80 and the SMTP on port 25
please.
I strip any and all HTML out at my MTA anyway, for every single incoming
messages, so even if the recipient intended for me to see hrefs, colors,
fonts, links, images, whatever... I won't see them. Set your mail client
to use text only in emails. The number of people filtering HTML from their
email is growing more and more every day. The unsecured mail clients who
"render" HTML email blindly into their mail client is a huge vector for
malware delivery.
For many years, I had a rule to outright block HTML at port 25, so I'd
never even accept them... but now that I use dspam and receive _zero_ spam
messages in my Inbox, I don't need to. The rule I was using (for sendmail,
for the curious), looked like this:
Rtext/html$* $#error $: 550 HTML-formatted mail rejected.
Rmultipart/alternative$* $#error $: 550 We do not accept
HTML-formatted mail here; please resend as plain text.
> If you want to start a new thread, its best to start with a new email,
> not a reply. On the flip side, if you want to reply, please hit
> "reply" rather than starting a new email, for the same reasons.
And let's also not forget that Reply is NOT the same as Reply All. Use
Reply for mailing lists, Reply All for personal person-to-person emails
with multiple recipients.
One thing you did forget to mention:
Please please PLEASE do not set up a "vacation rule" to send replies to
public mailing lists, period. Its the easiest way to make a large number
of enemies and get yourself banned/blocked from many public mailing lists.
I've been on lists where someone went on vacation for 2 weeks, and every
single reply to the list was met with his personal "Out of office"
message, which Cc'd another colleague of his, who was ALSO out of the
office. The 'ping-pong' effect that ensued, with hundreds of angry,
enraged users flooded the list for almost a full month, as these users
received over 800 "out of office" messages a day for almost a full week.
Overall, these are good points above. There are quite a few other
resources on Teh Intarweb to facilitate learning even more about email
ettiquette. I'd suggest searching them out and reading them.
David A. Desrosiers
Linux on Power Developer Program Manager
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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