Annotation of embedaddon/curl/docs/MAIL-ETIQUETTE, revision 1.1
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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.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.
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