Maillist Manners 101

[Guest guest]

I have watched the flaming and other controversies going on here and I thought

Adam's primer on e-mail might help a little. Among other things he is a long

time producer of and on-line magazine called Tidbits and makes some good

suggestions for us all to consider.

I wish you all good sleep!

Terry Tufts

Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 20:09:44 -0400

Subject: Maillist Manners 101

Excerpted from TidBITS.

Maillist Manners 101 by by Adam C. Engst ace@...>

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of mailing lists. I both subscribe to

and operate a number of lists on many topics, and I spend much of my day

communicating professionally and personally in these discussion groups.

And yet, I'm troubled by behaviors I see in most lists. Many people pay

little attention to spelling, grammar, and the basic composition of their

messages, post pointless notes, and bulk up replies by quoting complete

originals and appending huge signatures. How you write in email -

especially in public places like mailing lists - affects how other people

regard you, your opinions, and your knowledge. Think of it this way: if

mailing list messages were a reflection of personal hygiene, you don't

want to come across to others like you need a shower, clean clothes, and

a haircut.

Here then are the main behaviors that I would encourage for all mailing

list participants. If you're as bothered by the problems in mailing lists

as I am, feel free to refer others to this article for advice. You can

link to it permanently at this URL:

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05386>

Write Carefully

I realize that I risk sounding like a pedant here, but in cases like

this, I don't care. Writing skills in the general Internet populace

stink, which means you can make yourself look even more intelligent and

thoughtful than you are by writing well. Good writing isn't difficult,

and requires only grammatical sentences and proper spelling. You don't

need to be a professional writer or be able to make words flow trippingly

off the tongue.

You should also follow a few basic rules when writing email:

* Don't use all capital letters for more than a word.

* Insert a blank line between paragraphs.

* Surround URLs with angle brackets to avoid problems at line

breaks.

* Don't use text styles (like bold or italic) or text colors in

mailing list messages, since many people won't see them and may

even see HTML tags instead.

Quote Sparingly

One of my peeves with mailing lists is that people seldom delete

unnecessary quoted text in their replies, with the worst being people who

reply to a message in a digest and quote the entire digest. Quoting

sparingly does require manual work, since most email programs

automatically quote the original message in replies. But failing to edit

the original wastes everyone's time and bandwidth.

In some email programs, you can select some text in the original message,

press a keyboard shortcut, and have only that text appear quoted in the

reply. (Eudora for the Macintosh does this with its Command-Shift-R

shortcut.) Other email programs assume that replying with some original

text selected means you want to quote only that text.

Especially problematic are email programs that quote an original message

by appending it to the bottom of the reply with no quote marks in front

of each line. That prevents inline replies, since there's no easy way to

differentiate original and new text, so users of those programs tend to

leave the entire original hanging off the end of the reply. That's fine

in private messages, but in mail destined for a list, it's just sloppy.

Unfortunately, the only solution to this problem is to switch to a

different email program

Avoid Junk Messages

Another complaint about people's behavior on mailing lists revolves

around " junk " messages. I'm not talking about spam, since spammers aren't

constructive members of a mailing list. Instead, junk messages fall into

the following categories:

* Unsubscribe messages mistakenly sent by subscribers who didn't read (or

locate) the instructions for leaving the list. Every list goes to lengths

to simplify the process of signing off, and yet a large number of people

still send unsubscribe messages to the list itself. Read and save the

welcome message you receive when you subscribe to a list, then refer to

it when you want to unsubscribe.

* Me-too posts sent by well-meaning list members replying only to convey

that they agree with a message or had a similar experience. A Web-based

poll is a better way to take votes on a topic.

* Welcome messages that appear when someone new joins the list. No one on

a mailing list needs to read " Glad to have you on the list! " from

everyone; send such messages to the new member in private mail.

* Congratulation messages that appear after a member of the list has

mentioned some milestone or personal triumph. Again, send these in

private email.

The moral of the story is simple: Avoid sending junk messages to a list.

They're easy to identify as you type - just ask yourself if the message

would be of interest to the majority of the mailing list. If not, that

doesn't mean your message is worthless: the original sender might

appreciate being welcomed or congratulated via private email.

Write Descriptive Subjects

When you receive messages from a mailing list, the first thing you see is

the subject line. Which of these subject lines would you rather see on a

mailing list devoted to, say, tropical fish?

> wondering

> Recommendations for fish that can live with cichlids

Unless your telepathic powers are better than mine, the first subject

line tells you nothing. So, the first rule of subject lines is to make

them descriptive.

Another problem affects primarily digest readers. They see an interesting

message and want to reply, but when they do so, their email program uses

the subject line of the digest (Tropical Fish Digest #251) rather than

the subject of the message. That leads to messages being sent to the list

with useless subject lines, since the title of the digest is rarely

descriptive. There's no good solution to this problem, although two

mediocre workarounds exist.

* Copy the subject line from the message to which you're replying and

paste it into your reply's subject line, prefixing it with " Re: " . This is

effort well spent.

* Have the digest sent as a MIME digest and use an email program like

Eudora Pro that can separate the digest into individual messages in a

mailbox. The problem goes away then, but, for some people, so does the

point of receiving the digest version of a list.

Sometimes you want to reply to a message but change the topic of

discussion. When you do that, you should change the subject line; if you

don't, people following the thread will be confused when your message

doesn't match its subject. Some people (and some programs) indicate when

they've changed a subject line by appending " (was

) " to the new subject. That's acceptable but results in long and

unwieldy subject lines that work badly in list archives.

On the other side are people who change the subject lines on every

message they send. That's equally problematic, since it prevents list

members from reading (or sorting) messages that are related by a shared

subject line.

If you create descriptive subjects, maintain the correct subjects if

you're a digest reader, and change subjects only when appropriate, you'll

be well on your way to being admired as a paragon of list etiquette.

Use Short Signatures

My final gripe about mailing list postings is that many people have long

signatures at the end of their messages. Email signatures are useful, but

mailing list signatures should be kept to a minimum. This is especially

true for lists that have digests because the signatures can take up a

significant portion of the digest. For instance, messages with long

signatures sent to the moderated Info-Mac Digest are rejected with a note

asking the person to resend with a shorter signature.

Many email programs let you switch between multiple signatures, but you

have to remember to do so for each message. There's a trick you can use

in Eudora Pro (but not Eudora Light) to switch signatures automatically

when you're replying to messages that come from mailing lists. Follow

these steps:

1) In the Signatures window create a shortened signature for use

with mailing lists called " Short signature. " Your name,

affiliation, email address, and URL are all that is essential.

2) In the Personalities settings panel, create a personality

called " Mailing list signature. " Fill in the Real Name and Return

Address fields, and select the " Send mail whenever sends are done "

checkbox. All the other fields can be blank, and the checkboxes

related to checking mail should be deselected.

3) Switch to the Personality Extras settings panel, leave the

Stationery pop-up menu set to None, and choose Short signature

from the " Signature when not using stationery " pop-up menu. Click

OK to save your personality settings.

4) Open the Filters window. In filters that move messages from

mailing lists into specific mailboxes, add a Make Personality

action, and from the Personality pop-up menu, choose " Mailing list

signature. "

You've created a signature for use with mailing lists, connected it with

a specific personality that differs from your dominant personality only

in the default signature setting, then created a filter that

automatically assigns that personality to incoming messages from mailing

lists. Now, whenever you reply to a message from a mailing list, Eudora

Pro knows to use your mailing list personality and thus your mailing list

signature. You'll still have to choose your mailing list signature

manually when sending a new message to a list, but all replies will use

it automatically.

Ridin' that High Horse

I freely admit that there's nothing new in this article (well, except

maybe the Eudora tip above). These recommendations have been floating

around the Internet as long as there has been an Internet. The sad fact

is, though, that mailing list manners haven't improved with time.

So why can I complain? Two reasons. First, I think it's important that

this topic, old as it is, remains in the public eye. Second, I do the

work every day to create a mailing list that tries to conform to all the

recommendations above. In TidBITS Talk, I do the following to every

message:

http://www.tidbits.com/search/talk.html>

* Basic editing and spell checking.

* Eliminate unnecessary original text in replies.

* Reject junk messages.

* Normalize subject lines.

* Signature pruning.

I do all this work because I think it makes for a far better list

experience, and highly positive feedback from the members of the TidBITS

Talk list confirms this. Another advantage is that this work tends to

keep the list volume down, since I'm less likely to post messages that

require a lot of work to clean up.

I'm not trying to be smug - I love it when I can post submissions to

TidBITS Talk without a lick of work. I also don't expect most other

people who run mailing lists to expend this level of effort (though I

wouldn't complain if some did). Instead, my goal here is to educate

people who participate in mailing lists, since only by improving our list

manners will mailing lists continue to become increasingly pleasant and

useful.

Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if full

credit is given. Others please contact us. We don't guarantee accuracy of

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For information: how to subscribe, where to find back issues, and more,

email info@...>. TidBITS ISSN 1090-7017.

Dan Knight, dknight@... http://reformed.net/>

[Guest guest]

14 K's to send a message about e-mail etiquette!! Glad I don't have

have that bandwidth problem some people talk about!(whatever it is)

Have gone from LOL to LMAO. If laughter is the best medicine, then it

just goes to show that these non-rls messages are extremely

theraputic!!

ne, 59, Lawrenceville, NJ

--- Terry Tufts ttufts@...> wrote:

>

>

> I have watched the flaming and other controversies

> going on here and I thought

> Adam's primer on e-mail might help a little. Among

> other things he is a long

> time producer of and on-line magazine called Tidbits

> and makes some good

> suggestions for us all to consider.

>

> I wish you all good sleep!

>

> Terry Tufts

>

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