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| 6 | |
| 7 | MAIL 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 | 1.8 I posted, now what? |
| 18 | 1.9 Your emails are public |
| 19 | |
| 20 | 2. Sending mail |
| 21 | 2.1 Reply or New Mail |
| 22 | 2.2 Reply to the List |
| 23 | 2.3 Use a Sensible Subject |
| 24 | 2.4 Do Not Top-Post |
| 25 | 2.5 HTML is not for mails |
| 26 | 2.6 Quoting |
| 27 | 2.7 Digest |
| 28 | 2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem |
| 29 | |
| 30 | ============================================================================== |
| 31 | |
| 32 | 1. About the lists |
| 33 | |
| 34 | 1.1 Mailing Lists |
| 35 | |
| 36 | The mailing lists we have are all listed and described at |
| 37 | https://curl.se/mail/ |
| 38 | |
| 39 | Each mailing list is targeted to a specific set of users and subjects, |
| 40 | please use the one or the ones that suit you the most. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | Each mailing list has hundreds up to thousands of readers, meaning that each |
| 43 | mail sent will be received and read by a large number of people. People |
| 44 | from various cultures, regions, religions and continents. |
| 45 | |
| 46 | 1.2 Netiquette |
| 47 | |
| 48 | Netiquette is a common term for how to behave on the Internet. Of course, in |
| 49 | each particular group and subculture there will be differences in what is |
| 50 | acceptable and what is considered good manners. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | This document outlines what we in the curl project consider to be good |
| 53 | etiquette, and primarily this focus on how to behave on and how to use our |
| 54 | mailing lists. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | 1.3 Do Not Mail a Single Individual |
| 57 | |
| 58 | Many people send one question to one person. One person gets many mails, and |
| 59 | there is only one person who can give you a reply. The question may be |
| 60 | something that other people would also like to ask. These other people have |
| 61 | no way to read the reply, but to ask the one person the question. The one |
| 62 | person consequently gets overloaded with mail. |
| 63 | |
| 64 | If you really want to contact an individual and perhaps pay for his or her |
| 65 | services, by all means go ahead, but if it's just another curl question, |
| 66 | take it to a suitable list instead. |
| 67 | |
| 68 | 1.4 Subscription Required |
| 69 | |
| 70 | All curl mailing lists require that you are subscribed to allow a mail to go |
| 71 | through to all the subscribers. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | If you post without being subscribed (or from a different mail address than |
| 74 | the one you are subscribed with), your mail will simply be silently |
| 75 | discarded. You have to subscribe first, then post. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | The reason for this unfortunate and strict subscription policy is of course |
| 78 | to stop spam from pestering the lists. |
| 79 | |
| 80 | 1.5 Moderation of new posters |
| 81 | |
| 82 | Several of the curl mailing lists automatically make all posts from new |
| 83 | subscribers be moderated. This means that after you have subscribed and |
| 84 | sent your first mail to a list, that mail will not be let through to the |
| 85 | list until a mailing list administrator has verified that it is OK and |
| 86 | permits it to get posted. |
| 87 | |
| 88 | Once a first post has been made that proves the sender is actually talking |
| 89 | about curl-related subjects, the moderation "flag" will be switched off and |
| 90 | future posts will go through without being moderated. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | The reason for this moderation policy is that we do suffer from spammers who |
| 93 | actually subscribe and send spam to our lists. |
| 94 | |
| 95 | 1.6 Handling trolls and spam |
| 96 | |
| 97 | Despite our good intentions and hard work to keep spam off the lists and to |
| 98 | maintain a friendly and positive atmosphere, there will be times when spam |
| 99 | and or trolls get through. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | Troll - "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages |
| 102 | in an online community" |
| 103 | |
| 104 | Spam - "use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk |
| 105 | messages" |
| 106 | |
| 107 | No matter what, we NEVER EVER respond to trolls or spammers on the list. If |
| 108 | you believe the list admin should do something in particular, contact them |
| 109 | off-list. The subject will be taken care of as much as possible to prevent |
| 110 | repeated offenses, but responding on the list to such messages never leads to |
| 111 | anything good and only puts the light even more on the offender: which was |
| 112 | the entire purpose of it getting sent to the list in the first place. |
| 113 | |
| 114 | Do not feed the trolls. |
| 115 | |
| 116 | 1.7 How to unsubscribe |
| 117 | |
| 118 | You can unsubscribe the same way you subscribed in the first place. You go |
| 119 | to the page for the particular mailing list you are subscribed to and you enter |
| 120 | your email address and password and press the unsubscribe button. |
| 121 | |
| 122 | Also, the instructions to unsubscribe are included in the headers of every |
| 123 | mail that is sent out to all curl related mailing lists and there's a footer |
| 124 | in each mail that links to the "admin" page on which you can unsubscribe and |
| 125 | change other options. |
| 126 | |
| 127 | You NEVER EVER email the mailing list requesting someone else to take you off |
| 128 | the list. |
| 129 | |
| 130 | 1.8 I posted, now what? |
| 131 | |
| 132 | If you are not subscribed with the same email address that you used to send |
| 133 | the email, your post will just be silently discarded. |
| 134 | |
| 135 | If you posted for the first time to the mailing list, you first need to wait |
| 136 | for an administrator to allow your email to go through (moderated). This |
| 137 | normally happens quickly but in case we are asleep, you may have to wait a |
| 138 | few hours. |
| 139 | |
| 140 | Once your email goes through it is sent out to several hundred or even |
| 141 | thousands of recipients. Your email may cover an area that not that many |
| 142 | people know about or are interested in. Or possibly the person who knows |
| 143 | about it is on vacation or under a heavy work load right now. You may have |
| 144 | to wait for a response and you should not expect to get a response at all. |
| 145 | Ideally, you get an answer within a couple of days. |
| 146 | |
| 147 | You do yourself and all of us a service when you include as many details as |
| 148 | possible already in your first email. Mention your operating system and |
| 149 | environment. Tell us which curl version you are using and tell us what you |
| 150 | did, what happened and what you expected would happen. Preferably, show us |
| 151 | what you did with details enough to allow others to help point out the |
| 152 | problem or repeat the steps in their locations. |
| 153 | |
| 154 | Failing to include details will only delay responses and make people respond |
| 155 | and ask for more details and you will have to send a follow-up email that |
| 156 | includes them. |
| 157 | |
| 158 | Expect the responses to primarily help YOU debug the issue, or ask YOU |
| 159 | questions that can lead you or others towards a solution or explanation to |
| 160 | whatever you experience. |
| 161 | |
| 162 | If you are a repeat offender to the guidelines outlined in this document, |
| 163 | chances are that people will ignore you at will and your chances to get |
| 164 | responses in the future will greatly diminish. |
| 165 | |
| 166 | 1.9 Your emails are public |
| 167 | |
| 168 | Your email, its contents and all its headers and the details in those |
| 169 | headers will be received by every subscriber of the mailing list that you |
| 170 | send your email to. |
| 171 | |
| 172 | Your email as sent to a curl mailing list will end up in mail archives, on |
| 173 | the curl website and elsewhere, for others to see and read. Today and in |
| 174 | the future. In addition to the archives, the mail is sent out to thousands |
| 175 | of individuals. There is no way to undo a sent email. |
| 176 | |
| 177 | When sending emails to a curl mailing list, do not include sensitive |
| 178 | information such as user names and passwords; use fake ones, temporary ones |
| 179 | or just remove them completely from the mail. Note that this includes base64 |
| 180 | encoded HTTP Basic auth headers. |
| 181 | |
| 182 | This public nature of the curl mailing lists makes automatically inserted mail |
| 183 | footers about mails being "private" or "only meant for the recipient" or |
| 184 | similar even more silly than usual. Because they are absolutely not private |
| 185 | when sent to a public mailing list. |
| 186 | |
| 187 | |
| 188 | 2. Sending mail |
| 189 | |
| 190 | 2.1 Reply or New Mail |
| 191 | |
| 192 | Please do not reply to an existing message as a short-cut to post a message |
| 193 | to the lists. |
| 194 | |
| 195 | Many mail programs and web archivers use information within mails to keep |
| 196 | them together as "threads", as collections of posts that discuss a certain |
| 197 | subject. If you do not intend to reply on the same or similar subject, do not |
| 198 | just hit reply on an existing mail and change the subject, create a new mail. |
| 199 | |
| 200 | 2.2 Reply to the List |
| 201 | |
| 202 | When replying to a message from the list, make sure that you do "group |
| 203 | reply" or "reply to all", and not just reply to the author of the single |
| 204 | mail you reply to. |
| 205 | |
| 206 | We are actively discouraging replying back to the single person by setting |
| 207 | the Reply-To: field in outgoing mails back to the mailing list address, |
| 208 | making it harder for people to mail the author directly, if only by mistake. |
| 209 | |
| 210 | 2.3 Use a Sensible Subject |
| 211 | |
| 212 | Please use a subject of the mail that makes sense and that is related to the |
| 213 | contents of your mail. It makes it a lot easier to find your mail afterwards |
| 214 | and it makes it easier to track mail threads and topics. |
| 215 | |
| 216 | 2.4 Do Not Top-Post |
| 217 | |
| 218 | If you reply to a message, do not use top-posting. Top-posting is when you |
| 219 | write the new text at the top of a mail and you insert the previous quoted |
| 220 | mail conversation below. It forces users to read the mail in a backwards |
| 221 | order to properly understand it. |
| 222 | |
| 223 | This is why top posting is so bad (in top posting order): |
| 224 | |
| 225 | A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. |
| 226 | Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? |
| 227 | A: Top-posting. |
| 228 | Q: What is the most annoying thing in email? |
| 229 | |
| 230 | Apart from the screwed up read order (especially when mixed together in a |
| 231 | thread when someone responds using the mandated bottom-posting style), it |
| 232 | also makes it impossible to quote only parts of the original mail. |
| 233 | |
| 234 | When you reply to a mail. You let the mail client insert the previous mail |
| 235 | quoted. Then you put the cursor on the first line of the mail and you move |
| 236 | down through the mail, deleting all parts of the quotes that do not add |
| 237 | context for your comments. When you want to add a comment you do so, inline, |
| 238 | right after the quotes that relate to your comment. Then you continue |
| 239 | downwards again. |
| 240 | |
| 241 | When most of the quotes have been removed and you have added your own words, |
| 242 | you are done. |
| 243 | |
| 244 | 2.5 HTML is not for mails |
| 245 | |
| 246 | Please switch off those HTML encoded messages. You can mail all those funny |
| 247 | mails to your friends. We speak plain text mails. |
| 248 | |
| 249 | 2.6 Quoting |
| 250 | |
| 251 | Quote as little as possible. Just enough to provide the context you cannot |
| 252 | leave out. A lengthy description can be found here: |
| 253 | |
| 254 | https://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html |
| 255 | |
| 256 | 2.7 Digest |
| 257 | |
| 258 | We allow subscribers to subscribe to the "digest" version of the mailing |
| 259 | lists. A digest is a collection of mails lumped together in one single mail. |
| 260 | |
| 261 | Should you decide to reply to a mail sent out as a digest, there are two |
| 262 | things you MUST consider if you really really cannot subscribe normally |
| 263 | instead: |
| 264 | |
| 265 | Cut off all mails and chatter that is not related to the mail you want to |
| 266 | reply to. |
| 267 | |
| 268 | Change the subject name to something sensible and related to the subject, |
| 269 | preferably even the actual subject of the single mail you wanted to reply to |
| 270 | |
| 271 | 2.8 Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem |
| 272 | |
| 273 | Many people mail questions to the list, people spend some of their time and |
| 274 | make an effort in providing good answers to these questions. |
| 275 | |
| 276 | If you are the one who asks, please consider responding once more in case |
| 277 | one of the hints was what solved your problems. The guys who write answers |
| 278 | feel good to know that they provided a good answer and that you fixed the |
| 279 | problem. Far too often, the person who asked the question is never heard from |
| 280 | again, and we never get to know if they are gone because the problem was |
| 281 | solved or perhaps because the problem was unsolvable. |
| 282 | |
| 283 | Getting the solution posted also helps other users that experience the same |
| 284 | problem(s). They get to see (possibly in the web archives) that the |
| 285 | suggested fixes actually have helped at least one person. |