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