1 _ _ ____ _ 2 ___| | | | _ \| | 3 / __| | | | |_) | | 4 | (__| |_| | _ <| |___ 5 \___|\___/|_| \_\_____| 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.haxx.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 43 each mail sent will be received and read by a very large number of people. 44 People 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've 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 him/her 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 Don't 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're 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 aren't subscribed with the exact same email address that you used to 133 send 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 normally 137 happens very quickly but in case we're asleep, you may have to wait a few 138 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 people 142 know about or are interested in. Or possibly the person who knows about it 143 is on vacation or under a very heavy work load right now. You may have to wait 144 for a response and you should not expect to get a response at all, but 145 hopefully 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're 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 problem 152 or repeat the same 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 web site 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 don't intend to reply on the same or similar subject, don't 198 just hit reply on an existing mail and change 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're 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, don't 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 e-mail? 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 don't 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've added your own words, 242 you're 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 he/she is 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 has helped at least one person. 286
