286 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
286 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
_ _ ____ _
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/ __| | | | |_) | |
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| (__| |_| | _ <| |___
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\___|\___/|_| \_\_____|
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MAIL ETIQUETTE
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1. About the lists
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1.1 Mailing Lists
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1.2 Netiquette
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1.3 Do Not Mail a Single Individual
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1.4 Subscription Required
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1.5 Moderation of new posters
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1.6 Handling trolls and spam
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1.7 How to unsubscribe
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1.8 I posted, now what?
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1.9 Your emails are public
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2. Sending mail
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2.1 Reply or New Mail
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2.2 Reply to the List
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2.3 Use a Sensible Subject
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2.4 Do Not Top-Post
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2.5 HTML is not for mails
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2.6 Quoting
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2.7 Digest
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2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem
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==============================================================================
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1. About the lists
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1.1 Mailing Lists
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The mailing lists we have are all listed and described at
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https://curl.se/mail/
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Each mailing list is targeted to a specific set of users and subjects,
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please use the one or the ones that suit you the most.
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Each mailing list has hundreds up to thousands of readers, meaning that each
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mail sent will be received and read by a large number of people. People
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from various cultures, regions, religions and continents.
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1.2 Netiquette
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Netiquette is a common term for how to behave on the Internet. Of course, in
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each particular group and subculture there will be differences in what is
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acceptable and what is considered good manners.
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This document outlines what we in the curl project consider to be good
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etiquette, and primarily this focus on how to behave on and how to use our
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mailing lists.
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1.3 Do Not Mail a Single Individual
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Many people send one question to one person. One person gets many mails, and
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there is only one person who can give you a reply. The question may be
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something that other people would also like to ask. These other people have
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no way to read the reply, but to ask the one person the question. The one
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person consequently gets overloaded with mail.
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If you really want to contact an individual and perhaps pay for his or her
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services, by all means go ahead, but if it's just another curl question,
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take it to a suitable list instead.
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1.4 Subscription Required
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All curl mailing lists require that you are subscribed to allow a mail to go
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through to all the subscribers.
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If you post without being subscribed (or from a different mail address than
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the one you are subscribed with), your mail will simply be silently
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discarded. You have to subscribe first, then post.
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The reason for this unfortunate and strict subscription policy is of course
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to stop spam from pestering the lists.
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1.5 Moderation of new posters
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Several of the curl mailing lists automatically make all posts from new
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subscribers be moderated. This means that after you have subscribed and
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sent your first mail to a list, that mail will not be let through to the
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list until a mailing list administrator has verified that it is OK and
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permits it to get posted.
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Once a first post has been made that proves the sender is actually talking
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about curl-related subjects, the moderation "flag" will be switched off and
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future posts will go through without being moderated.
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The reason for this moderation policy is that we do suffer from spammers who
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actually subscribe and send spam to our lists.
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1.6 Handling trolls and spam
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Despite our good intentions and hard work to keep spam off the lists and to
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maintain a friendly and positive atmosphere, there will be times when spam
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and or trolls get through.
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Troll - "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages
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in an online community"
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Spam - "use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk
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messages"
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No matter what, we NEVER EVER respond to trolls or spammers on the list. If
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you believe the list admin should do something in particular, contact them
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off-list. The subject will be taken care of as much as possible to prevent
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repeated offenses, but responding on the list to such messages never leads to
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anything good and only puts the light even more on the offender: which was
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the entire purpose of it getting sent to the list in the first place.
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Do not feed the trolls.
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1.7 How to unsubscribe
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You can unsubscribe the same way you subscribed in the first place. You go
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to the page for the particular mailing list you are subscribed to and you enter
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your email address and password and press the unsubscribe button.
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Also, the instructions to unsubscribe are included in the headers of every
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mail that is sent out to all curl related mailing lists and there is a footer
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in each mail that links to the "admin" page on which you can unsubscribe and
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change other options.
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You NEVER EVER email the mailing list requesting someone else to take you off
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the list.
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1.8 I posted, now what?
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If you are not subscribed with the same email address that you used to send
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the email, your post will just be silently discarded.
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If you posted for the first time to the mailing list, you first need to wait
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for an administrator to allow your email to go through (moderated). This
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normally happens quickly but in case we are asleep, you may have to wait a
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few hours.
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Once your email goes through it is sent out to several hundred or even
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thousands of recipients. Your email may cover an area that not that many
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people know about or are interested in. Or possibly the person who knows
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about it is on vacation or under a heavy work load right now. You may have
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to wait for a response and you should not expect to get a response at all.
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Ideally, you get an answer within a couple of days.
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You do yourself and all of us a service when you include as many details as
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possible already in your first email. Mention your operating system and
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environment. Tell us which curl version you are using and tell us what you
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did, what happened and what you expected would happen. Preferably, show us
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what you did with details enough to allow others to help point out the
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problem or repeat the steps in their locations.
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Failing to include details will only delay responses and make people respond
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and ask for more details and you will have to send a follow-up email that
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includes them.
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Expect the responses to primarily help YOU debug the issue, or ask YOU
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questions that can lead you or others towards a solution or explanation to
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whatever you experience.
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If you are a repeat offender to the guidelines outlined in this document,
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chances are that people will ignore you at will and your chances to get
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responses in the future will greatly diminish.
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1.9 Your emails are public
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Your email, its contents and all its headers and the details in those
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headers will be received by every subscriber of the mailing list that you
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send your email to.
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Your email as sent to a curl mailing list will end up in mail archives, on
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the curl website and elsewhere, for others to see and read. Today and in
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the future. In addition to the archives, the mail is sent out to thousands
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of individuals. There is no way to undo a sent email.
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When sending emails to a curl mailing list, do not include sensitive
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information such as user names and passwords; use fake ones, temporary ones
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or just remove them completely from the mail. Note that this includes base64
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encoded HTTP Basic auth headers.
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This public nature of the curl mailing lists makes automatically inserted mail
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footers about mails being "private" or "only meant for the recipient" or
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similar even more silly than usual. Because they are absolutely not private
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when sent to a public mailing list.
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2. Sending mail
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2.1 Reply or New Mail
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Please do not reply to an existing message as a short-cut to post a message
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to the lists.
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Many mail programs and web archivers use information within mails to keep
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them together as "threads", as collections of posts that discuss a certain
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subject. If you do not intend to reply on the same or similar subject, do not
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just hit reply on an existing mail and change the subject, create a new mail.
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2.2 Reply to the List
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When replying to a message from the list, make sure that you do "group
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reply" or "reply to all", and not just reply to the author of the single
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mail you reply to.
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We are actively discouraging replying back to the single person by setting
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the Reply-To: field in outgoing mails back to the mailing list address,
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making it harder for people to mail the author directly, if only by mistake.
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2.3 Use a Sensible Subject
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Please use a subject of the mail that makes sense and that is related to the
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contents of your mail. It makes it a lot easier to find your mail afterwards
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and it makes it easier to track mail threads and topics.
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2.4 Do Not Top-Post
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If you reply to a message, do not use top-posting. Top-posting is when you
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write the new text at the top of a mail and you insert the previous quoted
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mail conversation below. It forces users to read the mail in a backwards
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order to properly understand it.
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This is why top posting is so bad (in top posting order):
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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
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Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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A: Top-posting.
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Q: What is the most annoying thing in email?
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Apart from the screwed up read order (especially when mixed together in a
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thread when someone responds using the mandated bottom-posting style), it
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also makes it impossible to quote only parts of the original mail.
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When you reply to a mail. You let the mail client insert the previous mail
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quoted. Then you put the cursor on the first line of the mail and you move
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down through the mail, deleting all parts of the quotes that do not add
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context for your comments. When you want to add a comment you do so, inline,
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right after the quotes that relate to your comment. Then you continue
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downwards again.
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When most of the quotes have been removed and you have added your own words,
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you are done.
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2.5 HTML is not for mails
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Please switch off those HTML encoded messages. You can mail all those funny
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mails to your friends. We speak plain text mails.
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2.6 Quoting
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Quote as little as possible. Just enough to provide the context you cannot
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leave out. A lengthy description can be found here:
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https://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
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2.7 Digest
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We allow subscribers to subscribe to the "digest" version of the mailing
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lists. A digest is a collection of mails lumped together in one single mail.
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Should you decide to reply to a mail sent out as a digest, there are two
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things you MUST consider if you really really cannot subscribe normally
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instead:
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Cut off all mails and chatter that is not related to the mail you want to
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reply to.
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Change the subject name to something sensible and related to the subject,
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preferably even the actual subject of the single mail you wanted to reply to
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2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem
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Many people mail questions to the list, people spend some of their time and
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make an effort in providing good answers to these questions.
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If you are the one who asks, please consider responding once more in case
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one of the hints was what solved your problems. The guys who write answers
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feel good to know that they provided a good answer and that you fixed the
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problem. Far too often, the person who asked the question is never heard from
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again, and we never get to know if they are gone because the problem was
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solved or perhaps because the problem was unsolvable.
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Getting the solution posted also helps other users that experience the same
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problem(s). They get to see (possibly in the web archives) that the
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suggested fixes actually have helped at least one person.
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