MAIL-ETIQUETTE.md (10812B)
1 <!-- 2 Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al. 3 4 SPDX-License-Identifier: curl 5 --> 6 7 # Mail etiquette 8 9 ## About the lists 10 11 ### Mailing Lists 12 13 The mailing lists we have are all listed and described on the [curl 14 website](https://curl.se/mail/). 15 16 Each mailing list is targeted to a specific set of users and subjects, please 17 use the one or the ones that suit you the most. 18 19 Each mailing list has hundreds up to thousands of readers, meaning that each 20 mail sent is received and read by a large number of people. People from 21 various cultures, regions, religions and continents. 22 23 ### Netiquette 24 25 Netiquette is a common term for how to behave on the Internet. Of course, in 26 each particular group and subculture there are differences in what is 27 acceptable and what is considered good manners. 28 29 This document outlines what we in the curl project consider to be good 30 etiquette, and primarily this focus on how to behave on and how to use our 31 mailing lists. 32 33 ### Do Not Mail a Single Individual 34 35 Many people send one question to one person. One person gets many mails, and 36 there is only one person who can give you a reply. The question may be 37 something that other people would also like to ask. These other people have no 38 way to read the reply, but to ask the one person the question. The one person 39 consequently gets overloaded with mail. 40 41 If you really want to contact an individual and perhaps pay for his or her 42 services, by all means go ahead, but if it is just another curl question, take 43 it to a suitable list instead. 44 45 ### Subscription Required 46 47 All curl mailing lists require that you are subscribed to allow a mail to go 48 through to all the subscribers. 49 50 If you post without being subscribed (or from a different mail address than 51 the one you are subscribed with), your mail is simply silently discarded. You 52 have to subscribe first, then post. 53 54 The reason for this unfortunate and strict subscription policy is of course to 55 stop spam from pestering the lists. 56 57 ### Moderation of new posters 58 59 Several of the curl mailing lists automatically make all posts from new 60 subscribers be moderated. After you have subscribed and sent your first mail 61 to a list, that mail is not let through to the list until a mailing list 62 administrator has verified that it is OK and permits it to get posted. 63 64 Once a first post has been made that proves the sender is actually talking 65 about curl-related subjects, the moderation "flag" is switched off and future 66 posts go through without being moderated. 67 68 The reason for this moderation policy is that we do suffer from spammers who 69 actually subscribe and send spam to our lists. 70 71 ### Handling trolls and spam 72 73 Despite our good intentions and hard work to keep spam off the lists and to 74 maintain a friendly and positive atmosphere, there are times when spam and or 75 trolls get through. 76 77 Troll - "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in 78 an online community" 79 80 Spam - "use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages" 81 82 No matter what, we NEVER EVER respond to trolls or spammers on the list. If 83 you believe the list admin should do something in particular, contact them 84 off-list. The subject is taken care of as much as possible to prevent repeated 85 offenses, but responding on the list to such messages never leads to anything 86 good and only puts the light even more on the offender: which was the entire 87 purpose of it getting sent to the list in the first place. 88 89 Do not feed the trolls. 90 91 ### How to unsubscribe 92 93 You can unsubscribe the same way you subscribed in the first place. You go to 94 the page for the particular mailing list you are subscribed to and you enter 95 your email address and password and press the unsubscribe button. 96 97 Also, the instructions to unsubscribe are included in the headers of every 98 mail that is sent out to all curl related mailing lists and there is a footer 99 in each mail that links to the "admin" page on which you can unsubscribe and 100 change other options. 101 102 You NEVER EVER email the mailing list requesting someone else to take you off 103 the list. 104 105 ### I posted, now what? 106 107 If you are not subscribed with the same email address that you used to send 108 the email, your post is silently discarded. 109 110 If you posted for the first time to the mailing list, you first need to wait 111 for an administrator to allow your email to go through (moderated). This 112 normally happens quickly but in case we are asleep, you may have to wait a few 113 hours. 114 115 Once your email goes through it is sent out to several hundred or even 116 thousands of recipients. Your email may cover an area that not that many 117 people know about or are interested in. Or possibly the person who knows about 118 it is on vacation or under a heavy work load right now. You may have to wait 119 for a response and you should not expect to get a response at all. Ideally, 120 you get an answer within a couple of days. 121 122 You do yourself and all of us a service when you include as many details as 123 possible already in your first email. Mention your operating system and 124 environment. Tell us which curl version you are using and tell us what you 125 did, what happened and what you expected would happen. Preferably, show us 126 what you did with details enough to allow others to help point out the problem 127 or repeat the steps in their locations. 128 129 Failing to include details only delays responses and make people respond and 130 ask for more details and you have to send follow-up emails that include them. 131 132 Expect the responses to primarily help YOU debug the issue, or ask YOU 133 questions that can lead you or others towards a solution or explanation to 134 whatever you experience. 135 136 If you are a repeat offender to the guidelines outlined in this document, 137 chances are that people ignore you and your chances to get responses in the 138 future greatly diminish. 139 140 ### Your emails are public 141 142 Your email, its contents and all its headers and the details in those headers 143 are received by every subscriber of the mailing list that you send your email 144 to. 145 146 Your email as sent to a curl mailing list ends up in mail archives, on the 147 curl website and elsewhere, for others to see and read. Today and in the 148 future. In addition to the archives, the mail is sent out to thousands of 149 individuals. There is no way to undo a sent email. 150 151 When sending emails to a curl mailing list, do not include sensitive 152 information such as usernames and passwords; use fake ones, temporary ones or 153 just remove them completely from the mail. Note that this includes base64 154 encoded HTTP Basic auth headers. 155 156 This public nature of the curl mailing lists makes automatically inserted mail 157 footers about mails being "private" or "only meant for the recipient" or 158 similar even more silly than usual. Because they are absolutely not private 159 when sent to a public mailing list. 160 161 ## Sending mail 162 163 ### Reply or New Mail 164 165 Please do not reply to an existing message as a short-cut to post a message to 166 the lists. 167 168 Many mail programs and web archivers use information within mails to keep them 169 together as "threads", as collections of posts that discuss a certain subject. 170 If you do not intend to reply on the same or similar subject, do not just hit 171 reply on an existing mail and change the subject, create a new mail. 172 173 ### Reply to the List 174 175 When replying to a message from the list, make sure that you do "group reply" 176 or "reply to all", and not just reply to the author of the single mail you 177 reply to. 178 179 We are actively discouraging replying to the single person by setting the 180 correct field in outgoing mails back asking for replies to get sent to the 181 mailing list address, making it harder for people to reply to the author only 182 by mistake. 183 184 ### Use a Sensible Subject 185 186 Please use a subject of the mail that makes sense and that is related to the 187 contents of your mail. It makes it a lot easier to find your mail afterwards 188 and it makes it easier to track mail threads and topics. 189 190 ### Do Not Top-Post 191 192 If you reply to a message, do not use top-posting. Top-posting is when you 193 write the new text at the top of a mail and you insert the previous quoted 194 mail conversation below. It forces users to read the mail in a backwards order 195 to properly understand it. 196 197 This is why top posting is so bad (in top posting order): 198 199 A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. 200 Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? 201 A: Top-posting. 202 Q: What is the most annoying thing in email? 203 204 Apart from the screwed up read order (especially when mixed together in a 205 thread when someone responds using the mandated bottom-posting style), it also 206 makes it impossible to quote only parts of the original mail. 207 208 When you reply to a mail. You let the mail client insert the previous mail 209 quoted. Then you put the cursor on the first line of the mail and you move 210 down through the mail, deleting all parts of the quotes that do not add 211 context for your comments. When you want to add a comment you do so, inline, 212 right after the quotes that relate to your comment. Then you continue 213 downwards again. 214 215 When most of the quotes have been removed and you have added your own words, 216 you are done. 217 218 ### HTML is not for mails 219 220 Please switch off those HTML encoded messages. You can mail all those funny 221 mails to your friends. We speak plain text mails. 222 223 ### Quoting 224 225 Quote as little as possible. Just enough to provide the context you cannot 226 eave out. A lengthy description can be found 227 [here](https://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html). 228 229 ### Digest 230 231 We allow subscribers to subscribe to the "digest" version of the mailing 232 lists. A digest is a collection of mails lumped together in one single mail. 233 234 Should you decide to reply to a mail sent out as a digest, there are two 235 things you MUST consider if you really, really cannot subscribe normally 236 instead: 237 238 Cut off all mails and chatter that is not related to the mail you want to 239 reply to. 240 241 Change the subject name to something sensible and related to the subject, 242 preferably even the actual subject of the single mail you wanted to reply to 243 244 ### Please Tell Us How You Solved The Problem 245 246 Many people mail questions to the list, people spend some of their time and 247 make an effort in providing good answers to these questions. 248 249 If you are the one who asks, please consider responding once more in case one 250 of the hints was what solved your problems. The guys who write answers feel 251 good to know that they provided a good answer and that you fixed the problem. 252 Far too often, the person who asked the question is never heard from again, 253 and we never get to know if they are gone because the problem was solved or 254 perhaps because the problem was unsolvable. 255 256 Getting the solution posted also helps other users that experience the same 257 problem(s). They get to see (possibly in the web archives) that the suggested 258 fixes actually have helped at least one person.