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