Hi all,
I just published a blog entry [1]. Although I explained this topic a lot of times in the past I never wrote down the most basic principles of e-mail usage. Now I finally did it so I can point friends who are news in the Free Software community to this short guide. If you find it useful I will add it to wiki.fsfe.org.
Would you go to a job interview in your sweatpants? Would you sent your CV with handwritten corrections? If you answer those questions with no, you might also want to write professional e-mails. The Free Software community is a tough environment when it comes to e-mail usage. This short guide tries to help you that the community perceive you as a professional communicator.
- *Quotation* As a general rule: Do not quote the whole e-mail again, neither above your message, below or in the middle. Quote only the parts which are necessary. Use inline replying (for examples see Wikipedia’s article on posting style [2]) and trim messages if possible.
- *Subject* Choose a good meaningful subject line. “e-mail”, “help”, “hello”, or “questions” are not good subjects ;). When the topic of an e-mail changes, it helps to change the subject, too. Often it is beneficial to separated threads into different thread with different subjects.
- *Line break of e-mails* Should be around 72 characters. Nobody will kill you if it is 70 or 74 or even 76. But a lot of people will get angry if you do not have a line break at all.
- *E-Mail signature* Keep it small and simple. Signatures longer than five lines should be avoided. The separated for the signature is “– ” (minus minus blank) and then line break. The blank is important as many e-mail programs then know that it is a signature.
- *Mailinglists* Use list-reply. It is not necessary to include the sender in To: or Cc: if he is subscribed. If the e-mail programs are configured correct the sender will be Cc’ed if he is not subscribed or wishes to be Cc’ed.
- *Forwarding e-mails* When you forward e-mails try to give a short summary of the e-mail. Forwarding a huge e-mail thread to a list with only “FYI” will make you no friends.
- *General remark* The better you structure an e-mail and the better you present the content — the higher is the chance that people will read your e-mail.
If you like it you can also vote for it on fsdaily [3].
Looking forward to your comments, Matthias
1. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=405 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style 3. http://www.fsdaily.com/Beginner/E_mail_usage_in_the_Free_Software_community
Greetings,
On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 08:05:02PM +0100, Matthias Kirschner wrote:
I just published a blog entry [1]. Although I explained this topic a lot of times in the past I never wrote down the most basic principles of e-mail usage. Now I finally did it so I can point friends who are news in the Free Software community to this short guide. If you find it useful I will add it to wiki.fsfe.org.
I like this small kind of guide very good: main common user's mistakes highlighting, short and useful. It is really sad to see how many people do not know nearly everything of all mentioned here.
- *E-Mail signature* Keep it small and simple. Signatures longer than five lines should be avoided. The separated for the signature is “– ” (minus minus blank) and then line break. The blank is important as many e-mail programs then know that it is a signature.
I think that your editor converted double dash to single longer one. "– " instead of "-- ".
Very usefull Wikipedia's one!
Hello Sergey,
* Sergey Matveev stargravesm@gmail.com [2009-12-09 22:24:23 +0300]:
I think that your editor converted double dash to single longer one. "– " instead of "-- ".
Oh, thanks for spotting it. I justed fixed it.
Glad you liked it, Matthias
Matthias Kirschner mk@fsfe.org writes:
I just published a blog entry [1]. Although I explained this topic a lot of times in the past I never wrote down the most basic principles of e-mail usage. Now I finally did it so I can point friends who are news in the Free Software community to this short guide. If you find it useful I will add it to wiki.fsfe.org.
That's very good (with Sergey's correction), thank you for taking the time to write it.
- *Mailinglists* Use list-reply. It is not necessary to include the sender in To: or Cc: if he is subscribed. If the e-mail programs are configured correct the sender will be Cc’ed if he is not subscribed or wishes to be Cc’ed.
(In English, it's “mailing lists”, two words not one.)
Perhaps make the point that if your mail client doesn't *have* a “reply to list” operation, it's best to pressure the vendor to add this standard feature and/or switch to one that does have it. But that might be too much for this guide.
- *General remark* The better you structure an e-mail and the better you present the content — the higher is the chance that people will read your e-mail.
I would prefer this to be phrased to encourage thinking about the message from the reader's point of view. A sentiment like “make your message easy for someone else to read so that more people will easily read it”, phrased in your own words.
Ben Finney wrote:
Matthias Kirschner mk@fsfe.org writes:
- *Mailinglists* Use list-reply. It is not necessary to include the sender in To: or Cc: if he is subscribed. If the e-mail programs are configured correct the sender will be Cc’ed if he is not subscribed or wishes to be Cc’ed.Perhaps make the point that if your mail client doesn't *have* a “reply to list” operation, it's best to pressure the vendor to add this standard feature and/or switch to one that does have it. But that might be too much for this guide.
Thunderbird is an example: if I choose Reply it replies just to the sender, if I choose Reply all it replies to the sender and cc the list (just like in this email). But I've found out right now this addon (Reply to mailing list): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4455
Maybe you can add it to the blog post.
Cheers, Federico
Hi Federico,
* Federico Bruni brunology@gmx.com [2009-12-10 10:17:56 +0100]:
Thunderbird is an example: if I choose Reply it replies just to the sender, if I choose Reply all it replies to the sender and cc the list (just like in this email). But I've found out right now this addon (Reply to mailing list): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4455
I added it to https://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows/mk/EmailGuide under "User Comments".
Thanks, Matthias
Hi Federico,
Federico Bruni brunology@gmx.com writes:
Thunderbird is an example: if I choose Reply it replies just to the sender, if I choose Reply all it replies to the sender and cc the list (just like in this email). But I've found out right now this addon (Reply to mailing list): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4455
I think an important tool for mailing list handling is the Mail-Followup-To header[1].
According to this site[2] Thunderbird (at least since version 3) should be able to handle this header. So it should be one of the really rare mail clients which can handle mailing lists follow ups automatically and intelligent.
[1] http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html [2] http://www.leptonite.org/mft/software.html
best wishes, Björn
2009/12/10 Bjoern Schiessle schiessle@fsfe.org:
According to this site[2] Thunderbird (at least since version 3) should be able to handle this header. So it should be one of the really rare mail clients which can handle mailing lists follow ups automatically and intelligent.
That would be Gmail! What's the proportion of Gmail users on this list?
- d.
Hi David,
David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com writes:
2009/12/10 Bjoern Schiessle schiessle@fsfe.org:
According to this site[2] Thunderbird (at least since version 3) should be able to handle this header. So it should be one of the really rare mail clients which can handle mailing lists follow ups automatically and intelligent.
That would be Gmail! What's the proportion of Gmail users on this list?
Do you mean that Gmail can handle Mail-Followup-to headers? I'm not sure, at least your replay doesn't utilise my mail-followup-to header information and doesn't add one to your mail.
best wishes, Björn
2009/12/10 Bjoern Schiessle schiessle@fsfe.org:
David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com writes:
That would be Gmail! What's the proportion of Gmail users on this list?
Do you mean that Gmail can handle Mail-Followup-to headers? I'm not sure, at least your replay doesn't utilise my mail-followup-to header information and doesn't add one to your mail.
Sorry, I wasn't clear - it doesn't. I requested it as a feature ages ago and it hasn't been added.
(This leads to a permanent floating flamewar on the Ubuntu-Sounder list, for example. "Add reply-to!" "No, that's against this obscure RFC! Use Thunderbird!" "I shouldn't have to change client just to talk on a non-technical list!" etc., etc., etc.)
The workaround is to hit "Reply to all" and delete the personal email addresses.
- d.
* David Gerard wrote, On 10/12/09 13:22:
Sorry, I wasn't clear - it doesn't. I requested it as a feature ages ago and it hasn't been added.
(This leads to a permanent floating flamewar on the Ubuntu-Sounder list, for example. "Add reply-to!" "No, that's against this obscure RFC! Use Thunderbird!" "I shouldn't have to change client just to talk on a non-technical list!" etc., etc., etc.)
The workaround is to hit "Reply to all" and delete the personal email addresses.
As a courtesy to you I did that just now, but I prefer reply-to-all without my address deleted as it makes it easier to keep on top of threads I participate in.
Sam
Hi,
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 02:47:51PM -0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
As a courtesy to you I did that just now, but I prefer reply-to-all without my address deleted as it makes it easier to keep on top of threads I participate in.
Me, as many other people I know, in contrary get ennerved if they get double responses to their posts.
My 2 cents Michae
* Michael Kesper wrote, On 10/12/09 15:09:
Hi,
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 02:47:51PM -0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
As a courtesy to you I did that just now, but I prefer reply-to-all without my address deleted as it makes it easier to keep on top of threads I participate in.
Me, as many other people I know, in contrary get ennerved if they get double responses to their posts.
Many mailing list managers s exclude from distribution recipients who are also listed in To: and Cc:
Sam
"Sam Liddicott" sam@liddicott.com writes:
Many mailing list managers s exclude from distribution recipients who are also listed in To: and Cc:
Many people participate in mailing lists without being subscribed to them (e.g. via Gmane). There is no way for the mailing list to know whether this is the case.
In that case, the recipient doesn't want *any* copies of the message in their email. Which is what they've taken care of by not subscribing their email address to the list.
Ben Finney wrote:
Many people participate in mailing lists without being subscribed to them (e.g. via Gmane). There is no way for the mailing list to know whether this is the case.
True...
In that case, the recipient doesn't want *any* copies of the message in their email.
...But don't generalize, please. I read this list as a newsgroup (and many others), but I don't mind, and even appreciate when people CC me.
Which is what they've taken care of by not subscribing their email address to the list.
Not necessarily. It's just a matter of habit for me -- if the list is available as a newsgroup, I read it as a newsgroup. (Another reason is to reduce the load on my spam filter -- if I had to receive every message I read as email, that scruffy machine would experience sky-high load.)
On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:09:23 +0100, Michael Kesper wrote:
Me, as many other people I know, in contrary get ennerved if they get double responses to their posts.
procmail is your friend (or Gnus).
Salam-Shalom,
Werner
Hi,
Michael Kesper mkesper@schokokeks.org writes:
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 02:47:51PM -0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
As a courtesy to you I did that just now, but I prefer reply-to-all without my address deleted as it makes it easier to keep on top of threads I participate in.
Me, as many other people I know, in contrary get ennerved if they get double responses to their posts.
To avoid this you just have to tell the world that you are subscribed to the list. Mail-followup-to exactly do this. ;-)
Especially on large and public list I don't know who is subscribed and who is not. So the only way to solve this problem is that everyone who is subscribed propagate this information. Preferable in a way that the mail client can deal with it. So that you don't have to do a "replay to all" and than go through the list of recipients and decide which email has to removed and which has to stay.
Beside that, as mentioned by Werner, your mail provider, procmail and/or mail client should be able to detect and remove duplicates.
best wishes, Björn
According to this site[2] Thunderbird (at least since version 3) should be able to handle this header. So it should be one of the really rare mail clients which can handle mailing lists follow ups automatically and
"rare"? Mutt does since the introduction of MFT, Gnus does it as well and I guess there are many more compliant MUAs out there. The only problem is that you need to configure the list of subscribed mailing lists and a list of your own mail addresses.
Shalom-Salam,
Werner
Hi Werner,
Werner Koch wk@gnupg.org writes:
According to this site[2] Thunderbird (at least since version 3) should be able to handle this header. So it should be one of the really rare mail clients which can handle mailing lists follow ups automatically and
"rare"? Mutt does since the introduction of MFT, Gnus does it as well and I guess there are many more compliant MUAs out there. The only problem is that you need to configure the list of subscribed mailing lists and a list of your own mail addresses.
at least If you look at the list I linked to it looks like not many mail clients support MFT. Of course the large and well known clients in the Free Software community (mutt and gnus) can handle MFT. :-)
But it seems like more and more people use clients like Evolution, Kmail, Claws, web mailer,... And that's where the "problem" starts.
best wishes, Björn
On 12/10/2009 04:17 AM, Federico Bruni wrote:
Thunderbird is an example: if I choose Reply it replies just to the sender, if I choose Reply all it replies to the sender and cc the list (just like in this email). But I've found out right now this addon (Reply to mailing list): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4455
Thunderbird 3.0 which is now available, replaces the 'reply' button with a 'reply list' button, when reading a mailing list post. You have to click a drop-down next to it to reply individually.
TB3.0 is pretty cool, I've been using it for about six months.
Hi Ben,
* Ben Finney bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au [2009-12-10 08:48:47 +1100]:
(In English, it's “mailing lists”, two words not one.)
Fixed that.
Perhaps make the point that if your mail client doesn't *have* a “reply to list” operation, it's best to pressure the vendor to add this standard feature and/or switch to one that does have it. But that might be too much for this guide.
I agree that people should do so. But as you said it is too much to include that in the guide.
- *General remark* The better you structure an e-mail and the better you present the content — the higher is the chance that people will read your e-mail.I would prefer this to be phrased to encourage thinking about the message from the reader's point of view. A sentiment like “make your message easy for someone else to read so that more people will easily read it”, phrased in your own words.
You are right that phrased better. Do you think https://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows/mk/EmailGuide is fine?
Best wishes, Matthias
Hi Matthias,
On Wednesday 09 Dec 2009 19:05:02 Matthias Kirschner wrote:
Would you go to a job interview in your sweatpants? Would you sent your CV with handwritten corrections? If you answer those questions with no, you might also want to write professional e-mails. The Free Software community is a tough environment when it comes to e-mail usage. This short guide tries to help you that the community perceive you as a professional communicator.
I think that this is a great idea and agree with (almost all of) your points.
- *Line break of e-mails* Should be around 72 characters. Nobody will kill you if it is 70 or 74 or even 76. But a lot of people will get angry if you do not have a line break at all.
Can I ask what the reason behind this is?
I really don't like static word wrapping, as much as I don't like static width web pages. I read emails on a variety of devices and window sizes, and the presumption that ~72 characters is appropriate for wherever I'm reading it seems rather arbitrary.
A good client should have dynamic word wrapping IMO.
Cheers,
Pete.
Greetings,
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 01:15:24PM +0000, Peter Lewis wrote:
- *Line break of e-mails* Should be around 72 characters. Nobody will kill you if it is 70 or 74 or even 76. But a lot of people will get angry if you do not have a line break at all.Can I ask what the reason behind this is?
That is because of email systems was created when most users have standart terminals without any GUI. The standart terminal's workspace size is 80x25 (24?) characters. No more, no less. It is standart.
As mk@ wrote, email was used mainly by technical people in places like USENET.
Modern email clients like Mutt, Gnus, Mailx, Pine, etc of course use terminal too. And it is really VERY ugly to read messages with lines longer that 80 characters. 72 is some kind of "protective"-layer between text itself and standart terminal's width of 80 characters. You know -- line numbers in Vi(m), line borders of email client, maybe too long words and so on.
Line printer's standart width was 80 characters too.
I really don't like static word wrapping, as much as I don't like static width web pages. I read emails on a variety of devices and window sizes, and the presumption that ~72 characters is appropriate for wherever I'm reading it seems rather arbitrary.
Web was never forced to be used on standart terminals -- it was GUI oriented, so of course it must be dynamic anyway.
A good client should have dynamic word wrapping IMO.
If you are using system that is 30 (40?) years old -- you should know it's rules. Even RFCs will tell you about 80/72 characters issues.
If it will use dynamic wrapping, then noone can guarantee you that you read EXACTLY what I send you. In HTML you have to use <pre>-tag for what, all email always was used oriented (repeating again) on terminals and so on, that is why it should not do anything with body (more or less).
Hi Sergey,
On Thursday 10 Dec 2009 13:37:14 Sergey Matveev wrote:
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 01:15:24PM +0000, Peter Lewis wrote:
- *Line break of e-mails* Should be around 72 characters. Nobody will kill you if it is 70 or 74 or even 76. But a lot of people will get angry if you do not have a line break at all.Can I ask what the reason behind this is?
That is because of email systems was created when most users have standart terminals without any GUI. The standart terminal's workspace size is 80x25 (24?) characters. No more, no less. It is standart.
(and from below)
If you are using system that is 30 (40?) years old -- you should know it's rules. Even RFCs will tell you about 80/72 characters issues.
Absolutely, as you quite rightly say, 30 or so years ago. But nowadays the terminal is _one way_ of reading email. There are now others, and in my very humble opinion, cultural conventions should always be able to be updated to move with the way people actually use things.
Modern email clients like Mutt, Gnus, Mailx, Pine, etc of course use terminal too. And it is really VERY ugly to read messages with lines longer that 80 characters. 72 is some kind of "protective"-layer between text itself and standart terminal's width of 80 characters. You know -- line numbers in Vi(m), line borders of email client, maybe too long words and so on.
This is of course valid, though the client could detect the size of the terminal and wrap accordingly, no (assuming there was also an option to disable it)?
If it will use dynamic wrapping, then noone can guarantee you that you read EXACTLY what I send you. In HTML you have to use <pre>-tag for what, all email always was used oriented (repeating again) on terminals and so on, that is why it should not do anything with body (more or less).
This is probably the best argument, i.e. if what is being sent is code, a patch or something which isn't natural language where line breaks have other meanings... but couldn't (shouldn't?) these go in attachments anyway?
Pete.
Greetings,
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 03:48:18PM +0000, Peter Lewis wrote:
Absolutely, as you quite rightly say, 30 or so years ago. But nowadays the terminal is _one way_ of reading email. There are now others, and in my very humble opinion, cultural conventions should always be able to be updated to move with the way people actually use things.
But, you are using email system that is 30 or so years old. All email message format (RFC822 AFAIR), SMTP, POP3/IMAP, mbox/Maildir, MIME, Base64/Quoted-Printable -- nearly everything of this is for old 30-40 years old systems. You are using it -- you can not change any rules, protocols, formats and specifications. If you will -- you will get the very different system, of course that can work quite good with unlimited lines.
This is of course valid, though the client could detect the size of the terminal and wrap accordingly, no (assuming there was also an option to disable it)?
Why not to do it reversely? If no postprocessing to 72-formated message is applied -- it will be ideally shown on all terminals. If you have got Web-interface, cellphone or netbook -- you can switch some kind of postprocessing on to trim all newlines and do whatever you want. Why should increadible amount of an old-style email writers switch to something? Why not just to format your message 72-chars per line and everyone will be happy? :-)
This is probably the best argument, i.e. if what is being sent is code, a patch or something which isn't natural language where line breaks have other meanings... but couldn't (shouldn't?) these go in attachments anyway?
Why should we change email to look like Web? It is very different fully undependent systems.
Hi,
* Peter Lewis prlewis@fsfe.org [091210 14:18]:
- *Line break of e-mails* Should be around 72 characters. Nobody will kill you if it is 70 or 74 or even 76. But a lot of people will get angry if you do not have a line break at all.Can I ask what the reason behind this is?
I really don't like static word wrapping, as much as I don't like static width web pages. I read emails on a variety of devices and window sizes, and the presumption that ~72 characters is appropriate for wherever I'm reading it seems rather arbitrary.
A good client should have dynamic word wrapping IMO.
I don't think so. A good client should show exactly the content of an e-mail. If there is no line break, don't show it. I use mutt (IMHO one of the best e-mail clients out there) which adds a coloured "+" if a text without a line break hits the right margin in the pager. I think the 72 chars recommendation has something to do with the 80 chars width of a standard terminal (not sure about it though). I personally believe it's better to have narrow lines and more of them instead having to read endless lines (and maybe have to scroll in a GUI mail client that does not break lines automatically, which I prefer as already mentioned).
All the best, Martin
Martin,
On Thursday 10 Dec 2009 13:41:26 Martin Gollowitzer wrote:
A good client should have dynamic word wrapping IMO.
I don't think so. A good client should show exactly the content of an e-mail. If there is no line break, don't show it. I use mutt (IMHO one of the best e-mail clients out there) which adds a coloured "+" if a text without a line break hits the right margin in the pager. I think the 72 chars recommendation has something to do with the 80 chars width of a standard terminal (not sure about it though).
This is an interesting point - really we'd need different functionality based on the content of the email: natural language vs code of some sort, where, as I mentioned in my previous email, line breaks matter. But presumably it wouldn't be too difficult to implement a quick keypress which switched between dynamic breaking and not breaking. In KMail (my preferred client) for example, I can hit 'x' to switch between a variable width font (best for natural language) and a fixed width font (best for code and ASCII art).
I personally believe it's better to have narrow lines and more of them instead having to read endless lines (and maybe have to scroll in a GUI mail client that does not break lines automatically, which I prefer as already mentioned).
Then, if I may be so bold, this would be your choice to have your client dynamically break it with short lines :-)
Pete.
* Also sprach Peter Lewis prlewis@fsfe.org:
On Wednesday 09 Dec 2009 19:05:02 Matthias Kirschner wrote:
- *Line break of e-mails* Should be around 72 characters. Nobody will kill you if it is 70 or 74 or even 76. But a lot of people will get angry if you do not have a line break at all.I really don't like static word wrapping, as much as I don't like static width web pages. I read emails on a variety of devices and window sizes, and the presumption that ~72 characters is appropriate for wherever I'm reading it seems rather arbitrary.
Static width in web sites and e-mail is not comparable. They have very little in common, and indeed ”static width” is a very confusing term to use. Web sites do not concern themselves with new lines; e-mail does. This is the basic reason why these two should be treated separately.
As e-mails ought to be sent in plain text format only, you should also wrap your lines at between 70 and 80 characters. In the RFC 2822, 78 characters per line is specified as the standard.
Initially, breaking the lines was necessary for displaying e-mails correctly on text-only terminals. This has since become the norm for mail authoring, however. Web technologies, such as HTML, behaves differently as they are built to resemble typesetting qualities. In HTML, line breaks (carriage return and new line) does not affect the output, as new lines must be specified through a tag (<br />).
As these two technologies serves different purposes, they also behave differently. Around 70 to 80 characters per line is also a comfortable length of a line to read, with a free-flowing e-mail content this is not easy to accomodate without altering the content of the author, which would likely lead to much confusion.
If you're using a sensible editor, it will already be programmed to conventiently perform this task for you. In GNU Emacs, you can use the ”M-q” shortcut to wrap and indent the line correctly. There is an equvialent in vim by pressing ”gqap”, although this is not as sophisticated as Emacs', it will do the trick. [1]
Some other mail user agents also have settings for automatically wrapping mails upon sending them, such as Opera's M2 and Gmail, I believe.
A good client should have dynamic word wrapping IMO.
It is considered bad e-mail etiquette to send e-mails without wrapping them. But of course, there is nothing preventing you from removing \r\n (carriage return, new line) on all your incoming e-mail to better facilitate reading e-mail on various devices.
Notes.
1. I have assigned various combinations of ”gqap” in my .vimrc like this:
" Have Q reformat the current paragraph (or selected text if there " is any): nnoremap Q gqap vnoremap Q gq
Apologies for so many emails on this point... ;-)
On Thursday 10 Dec 2009 13:49:43 Andreas Tolf Tolfsen wrote:
As e-mails ought to be sent in plain text format only, you should also wrap your lines at between 70 and 80 characters. In the RFC 2822, 78 characters per line is specified as the standard.
Whilst I agree completely with the plain text point, things really do move on, and cultural conventions should adapt also.
To illustrate my point, see here:
http://www.petesodyssey.org/files/email-wasted-space.png
On my laptop, I get lots of annoying wasted space, which makes me have to scroll to read the email, because some other people don't want their clients to wrap.
On my mobile phone, 72 characters is far too many. Static line lengths really shouldn't be the norm when email clients have such different capabilities.
If you're using a sensible editor, it will already be programmed to conventiently perform this task for you. In GNU Emacs, you can use the ”M-q” shortcut to wrap and indent the line correctly. There is an equvialent in vim by pressing ”gqap”, although this is not as sophisticated as Emacs', it will do the trick. [1]
<snip - further useful details about wrapping text statically in mail clients before sending>
Of course we can all conform on this item... but for me that's just not the point.
Cheers,
Pete.
Matthias Kirschner wrote:
- *E-Mail signature* Keep it small and simple. Signatures longer than five lines should be avoided.
IIRC in the good old days the standard was maximum 4 lines (5 lines with the "-- " sig separator).
- *Mailinglists* Use list-reply. It is not necessary to include the sender in To: or Cc: if he is subscribed. If the e-mail programs are configured correct the sender will be Cc’ed if he is not subscribed or wishes to be Cc’ed.
Hmm. This is certainly debatable. On GNU and GNOME mailing lists (and I dare to say, on *most* free software lists) the default policy is to always to CC people who participated in the thread.
This is fairly logical:
Scenario 1)
I am a user who discovered a bug in GNU Foo, and post to bug-foo@gnu.org. I should not be required to subscribe, and I should not be required to dig eventual followups via inconvenient interfaces like Mailman's archives, or -- heaven forbid -- something like the various/nefarious mail archiving sites like nabble.com. I should get the response right away.
Scenario 2)
I'm a regular lurker on the bug-foo list, thus I'm subscribed. A user reports a bug/misfeature, or is confused about something in the `foo' package, so I reply to him. It is not feasible to check whether the user is subscribed, even if I happen to be the list admin. I just CC her, to be on the safe side and save her extra trouble.
Scenario 3)
I happen to develop gnome-foo and need to announce a string change to gnome-i18n during a string freeze. I'm not a translator myself, and I'm not subscribed to that list. I post the announcement, but a translator then asks a question about the new (cryptic) string, which I don't receive.
Scenario 4)
I'm subscribed to many lists, but I don't read regularly all of them. However, if I participate in a discussion on some of those "low interest" lists, I appreciate if a person who posts to the thread CCs me. I know this is not very usual situation, but the more mail I'm processing as years go by, the more I appreciate it.
Scenario N)
There are plenty. Really.
From all the lists I'm subscribed to (much more than 200, actually), TTBOMK only Debian has a strict no-CC policy. I comply, of course, although I notice that many DDs don't bother. (The extra mental excercise to determine where you're posting to is also slightly annoying.) In general, it seems to me that a no-CC policy is very inter-community friendly (you sort your mail easily, and you rely people to CC you when you ask), but basically user-unfriendly -- it is very presumptuous to rely that the OP is going to search and watch for your-almighty-followup just because you happen to have an odd list policy.
More generally speaking, mailing lists are a gross hack to replace Usenet newsgroups, just because the new kids on the block seem to find NNTP archaic and weird (partly because most "modern" user-agents have from moderate to poor NNTP support). Thus the always-CC vs. no-CC debate. YMMV.
Hi Yavor,
* Yavor Doganov yavor@gnu.org [091210 18:40]:
Matthias Kirschner wrote:
- *E-Mail signature* Keep it small and simple. Signatures longer than five lines should be avoided.IIRC in the good old days the standard was maximum 4 lines (5 lines with the "-- " sig separator).
- *Mailinglists* Use list-reply. It is not necessary to include the sender in To: or Cc: if he is subscribed. If the e-mail programs are configured correct the sender will be Cc’ed if he is not subscribed or wishes to be Cc’ed.Hmm. This is certainly debatable. On GNU and GNOME mailing lists (and I dare to say, on *most* free software lists) the default policy is to always to CC people who participated in the thread.
I tend to agree. I use the list-reply function mainly if, for example, a question from someone comes to a private mailinglist and my reply is intended as list-internal (thus, I also change the subject line) or if I know the sender of a message is on that list anyway. Otherwise, I almost always use mutt's group-reply function, which replies to the sender *and* the mailing list, additionally setting the Mail-Followup-To: header to the list and the receiver. Since I actually don't want to get doubled messages, I (if possible) configure the mailing list software to not send me duplicates. That way, I stay on top of the discussion as replies go to my main inbox and is not automatically put into the mailing list folder without receiving every message x times.
Just my €0,02
Martin
On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:35:26 +0200, Yavor Doganov wrote:
More generally speaking, mailing lists are a gross hack to replace Usenet newsgroups, just because the new kids on the block seem to find NNTP archaic and weird (partly because most "modern" user-agents have
The reason why almost all real work moved from Usenet to MLs is due to the worse signal/noise ratio on the Usenet about 10 to 15 years ago.
Sure, NNTP is the far better system from a technical POV but that does not help you if you can't get your work done due to all the noise. Fortunately we have web fori (and blog comments) today so that MLs keep on working well.
Shalom-Salam,
Werner
Werner Koch wrote:
because the new kids on the block seem to find NNTP archaic and weird
The reason why almost all real work moved from Usenet to MLs is due to the worse signal/noise ratio on the Usenet about 10 to 15 years ago.
Ah, yes. That's probably the most important reason; what I pointed out is secondary.
Fortunately we have web fori (and blog comments) today so that MLs keep on working well.
Yeah, it's nice that these cloacae gather almost all of the noise. Still, there are mailing lists/newsgroups (like gnu.misc.discuss) that are nearly impossible to follow without resorting to plonk...
Matthias Kirschner wrote:
I just published a blog entry [1]. Although I explained this topic a lot of times in the past I never wrote down the most basic principles of e-mail usage. Now I finally did it so I can point friends who are news in the Free Software community to this short guide. If you find it useful I will add it to wiki.fsfe.org.
Because that blog still gives me an evil red-on-black eyetest, I comment here.
The big omission is attachments, I think. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html#attachments has a bit about them, but you probably want something a bit shorter.
I feel it's better to appeal to the Golden Rule (act with kindness if you want kindness back) instead of suggesting that people should look "professional". At its core, professionalism is doing something for reward rather than because you want to - it's not sustainable. Professionalism leads to wasteful actions like shredding a whole box of reports because one error was made and no-one wants to fix the mistake by putting an errata or sticker on it.
- *Forwarding e-mails* When you forward e-mails try to give a short summary of the e-mail. Forwarding a huge e-mail thread to a list with only “FYI” will make you no friends.
Two more aspects of it:
If the email was on a list, maybe you can link to the original in an archive.
If the email was sent privately, forwarding it to a list is a breach of trust and often arguably a breach of copyright.
Hope that helps,