Docs/Support/Mailinglists/Etiquette
From Mandriva Community Wiki
If you are new to one of the Mandriva Mailing Lists, then Welcome!
Common list etiquette that will make your posts more effective and make fellow list members happier to help:
[edit] Send Mail in Plain Text, not HTML
Send all email in Plain Text. See http://www.expita.com/nomime.html for many of the various ills of sending mail with HTML formatting. This page also explains specifically how to turn it off for most email programs.
[edit] Keep the Reply-To setting empty
Please keep you Reply-To field empty when emailing any email list. Somewhere in your mailer's settings there is probably the option to fill in the Reply-To field. If it is filled in, then whenever a fellow listmember replies to your post, the message will go to you directly instead of to the list. For information on the problems this causes www.monkeynoodle.org/comp/reply-to
[edit] Attribute who you're quoting in your reply
When posting a reply, be sure you have your mail program set up to attribute who you're quoting. In a one-on-one conversation, it's not as critical, but on a mailing list when there's a discussion thread going on, it can become really easy to lose track of who said what. An attribute line that says "You said:" or "You wrote:" (etc.) isn't very helpful, since on a mailing list your reply is going to many people. Your attribute line should include the first and last name of the poster (assuming they provided that on their From: line :) that you're replying to. See your mail program's help file for how to set this up properly.
It is not a good idea to put the E-Mail address of the person you're replying to in your attribute line, by the way. This list is archived, and spam bots are always scouring mailing list archives looking for addresses to add for their spam runs. So avoid putting an E-Mail address into the body of a message that you're sending.
[edit] Hijacking Threads
If you use Reply but change the subject, you are hijacking. Many of us prefer to read messages threaded. When threads are sorted they use a couple of headers (you can see these if you enable Full Headers in your mail reader) called Message ID and References. This means that your new subject is seen as part of the original thread, which makes it extremely difficult to follow. From your point of view, there is also the fact that many people choose to ignore threads that they can see are being adequately dealt with by someone else. If your post comes in that thread those people will not see it.
Note, however, that this is not the same thing as changing the subject when the natural evolotion of a discussion thread results in what is being discussed no longer reflecting what is in the Subject: line of the message. There is no reason to start a completely separate thread, since the conversation still has links back to the original thread and evolved from that as people started discussing particular points of the original message. In this case, simply changing the Subject: line of the message is considered acceptable, and is even encouraged so that others (who may have stopped following the original discussion) will know that you're discussing something along a different track now. Long-standing Usenet and mailing list etiquette in this case is to change the Subject: line thus:
-
- Subject: New subject (was: Old subject)
As you can see, the reference to the old subject is maintained so that people can see where the current discussion evolved from.
[edit] Pruning Responses and Long Threads
When responding to a previous post, please prune (snip) text from the post that is not needed to understand your contribution to the thread.
Don't be afraid to trim excess verbiage from the thread when it starts to become too long. Quoting only those parts of the e-mail you are replying to is acceptable.
[edit] Bottom Post
Please add your part to the bottom. Since most people read top to bottom, the flow will be much easier to understand. Also, these emails are archived, so we can all go back and lookup old topics. Again, the mails will be easier to read. Assuming the post has been properly pruned, there will be very little scrolling to get to the new info.
For posts with multiple points, it is fine to intersperse your new comments, with each new comment below the one it is referring to.
[edit] Line Wrap
Limit the line wrap in your mail client to 68 chars. Some email clients can't handle long lines, so the post becomes hard to read. The exact # is a topic of debate, but 68 seems to be acceptable.
[edit] Keep Signatures short
Keep your signature to a minimum. It can be extremely aggravating to other readers (and is a waste of bandwidth) when you post a one-line message (or reply) that is then followed by a 6+ line signature. RFC 1855 describes the standard "rule of thumb" for signatures as no longer than 4 lines.
[edit] On Vacation: Two good options
When going on vaction and using the "Vacation Reply" feature for your e-mail address, please unsubscribe from the list, or otherwise exclude it from giving out the reply. The amount of spam this creates is a nightmare.
Instead of unsubscribing you may wish to simply stop receiving list mail until you get back. To do this you send a mail to sympa@mandrivalinux(nospam).org, with the subject as SET listname NOMAIL (where listname is newbie or expert, for instance). Starting again is just as simple - SET <listname> MAIL
[edit] Getting help with your problems
- Identify any hardware relevant to the problem, and what if any, error messages you have seen; verbatim if possible
- Give the number of the Mandriva/Mandrake release you're using, and if using the GUI, which window manager (KDE/Gnome/etc.). The right answers will often differ depending on that information, so this avoids blind alleys and minimizes your chances of getting an answer that's correct ... but not for you. ;)
- Identify the application you're trying to use when you try to access the file you want to open/play/edit, and how you launched that app
- Report the result of any of the suggestions you've tried with (again) any error messages, any warnings or anything that seems "strange" to you. I know that strange is subjective but believe it or not "I heard a strange whining sound from the speakers" corrected a long-standing no sound glitch for one member back in Mandrake 7.1. "It didn't work" or "The mp3 would not play" isn't entirely helpful in diagnosing a problem. Details, details, and more details
- Answer the questions you're asked! There have been quite a few posts recently asking the exact same question repeatedly without an appropriate response when anyone has tried asking for information so that they *could* help. That won't work. If you don't know how to answer the questions ask the list members that, someone will usually get you going
- Forget about the way Windows does things. Linux offers you so many ways of doing anything, so you need to know both what you want to do, and what your options are for achieving it. There are hundreds of applications on your disks. Read all you can, try things, ask questions. Above all, enjoy! Good luck!
- One last thing - if you have solved your problem, please post the solution on the list. There is sure to be someone else who will benefit. There are also many of us who read threads about problems as a way of extending our knowledge. That's your contribution.
[edit] Cross Posting
In our case, this is not a matter of etiquette: the mail server doesn't handle it. If you want to send the same message to more than one Mandriva list, you'll have to send it to them individually. (The gory detail is that the server sends all copies of the mail to the list that is listed first in your To:/CC: fields.)
[edit] Shouting
Typing whole paragraphs or entire subjects with the capslock key set to 'on', is considered shouting and impolite. Many tend to ignore such messages.
[edit] Zinging Joe
The group as a whole may only zing Joe 10 times per week. After that, you have to target other people.
[edit] Basis of these recommendations
The 'rules' of internet usage are defined in RFCs (Request for Comments - which set out to define Internet behaviour). These 'rules' are not rigorously kept on this list, but the spirit is respected. If you are interested, the relevant RFC can be found at
- http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html#3 (html format) or
- http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html (plain text format)
[edit] Relevant Links
- This is the definitive web document on getting the most out of mailing lists like these, and similar technical forums found elsewhere. A must-read:
- An in-depth explanation of proper quoting technique; originally written for Usenet, but every bit as applicable here on the lists:
- http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html (English) or
- http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren/ (German) or
- http://www.houghi.org/quote/ (Dutch)
[edit] Mailing Lists
See Docs/Support/Mailinglists for info on the many mailing lists and archives.
