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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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