On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 11:37:30PM -0800, Justin Gallardo wrote: > Hey All, > I am preparing a presentation to a group of students on mailing list > netiquette (as you may have guessed by the subject), and thought that > maybe I could use the busiest mailing list I followed as a good source
> of information. I have thought of numerous things to bring up in the > presentation including rules about top-posting(not doing it), tips to > help keep the flow of conversation, and other various things. There > was one thing that I wasn't quite sure what everyone's opinion was > though. When replying to an email, is it proper to leave the original > poster in the To: line of the email, and the CC the list? Or is it > better to just send your reply to the list, not specifically > mentioning the original poster. Possibly it is acceptable to just do > whatever Reply All in your client gives you(I would think the effect of this is configurable through the mailing list). I was curious if I could get other's input on this matter. > Also, if you can think of any other good points to bring up during > this talk, I would love to hear them. The purpose of the talk is to > help create better open source community members for the future. So > any help now could possibly save you some heartache later :-). Here's my list, in no particular order: o post in plain text, not html, or "rich text" o your signature should be 4 lines or less in length o trim the comments of the OP removing that which is fluff (like their signature). o quote the original poster at the top, with your comments at the bottom, or intermix, your comments with the OP, but don't comment first, with the quote second. o For on topic posts, reply only to the list, not the OP. For off-topic posts, the OP may request replies off-list. In that case, honor the request. o stay on topic, for the list and the post. o if you must be off-topic, denote such in the subject line. o respect the members of the list, ie, don't flame. (When I read a flame to another person, I too feel disrespected, even though I'm not the target of the flame. The flamer has just "wasted" my time with his/her garbage that I need to read/delete.) o if the only thing you have to say is "me too", you don't have anything to say. Steve Belt
