path: root/note/comms.html



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	<head>
		<title>Communication Guidelines</title>
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		<h1>Communication Guidelines</h1>
		<p><a href="/contact.html">A few ways to contact me</a></p>
		<p>
		These are some general recommendations that I believe make communicating with me, at least, easier and/or more effective, including communication conventions that make me happier.  Please note that what I prefer may not be what others prefer and shall not be treated as a general guideline for communications.
		</p>
		<ol>
			<li>Write a descriptive subject for emails.  Do not send emails with an empty subject or no subject header.  The subject should be give the receiver a brief idea of what the email is about.</li>
			<li>Send complete information.  When telling me something or requesting something, please provide complete background information, knowledge required, and other relevant context.  This prevents back-and-forth communication along the lines of ``and now I need to know ... but you didn't tell me that so can you please give that to me''.  Providing context defragments conversations which increases efficiency.</li>
			<li>When using instant messaging such as IRC, do not split one sentence into multiple messages.  Fragmentation reduces readability.</li>
			<li>Do not use excessive emojis.</li>
			<li>Be direct.  As the sender, do not use polite expressions like ``you did quite well in that presentation'' when in reality, the sender believes that the presentation is not ``quite well''.  Direct critique and suggestions are very welcome here.  Politeness is acceptable if it does not interfere with honest conveying of information.</li>
			<li><a href="./ask.html">Don't ask to ask.</a></li>
			<li>Use plain text email.  Both hard-wrapped and non-hard-wrapped emails are acceptable.  If you do hard-wrap, please wrap at 72 characters for English.  Chinese, if hard-wrapped, should be at 36 characters.  Non hard-wrapped emails should <a href="https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt">specify format=flowed as per RFC3676</a>.</li>
			<li>Interweave the original message with the response when replying to an email and remove irrelevant parts (i.e. greetings, closings, signatures, etc.) of the quoted original email.</li>
		</ol>
		<p>
		Please note that <a href="./wechat.html">WeChat is not a preferred way of contacting me</a>.  <a href="/contact.html">Use these instead</a>.
		</p>
		<div id="footer">
			<hr />
			<p><a href="/">Andrew Yu's Website</a></p>
		</div>
	</body>
</html>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
	<head>
		<title>Communication Guidelines</title>
		<link rel="stylesheet" href="/plain.css" />
		<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
		<meta charset="utf-8" />
	</head>
	<body class="indent">
		<h1>Communication Guidelines</h1>
		<p><a href="/contact.html">A few ways to contact me</a></p>
		<p>
		These are some general recommendations that I believe make communicating with me, at least, easier and/or more effective, including communication conventions that make me happier.  Please note that what I prefer may not be what others prefer and shall not be treated as a general guideline for communications.
		</p>
		<ol>
			<li>Write a descriptive subject for emails.  Do not send emails with an empty subject or no subject header.  The subject should be give the receiver a brief idea of what the email is about.</li>
			<li>Send complete information.  When telling me something or requesting something, please provide complete background information, knowledge required, and other relevant context.  This prevents back-and-forth communication along the lines of ``and now I need to know ... but you didn't tell me that so can you please give that to me''.  Providing context defragments conversations which increases efficiency.</li>
			<li>When using instant messaging such as IRC, do not split one sentence into multiple messages.  Fragmentation reduces readability.</li>
			<li>Do not use excessive emojis.</li>
			<li>Be direct.  As the sender, do not use polite expressions like ``you did quite well in that presentation'' when in reality, the sender believes that the presentation is not ``quite well''.  Direct critique and suggestions are very welcome here.  Politeness is acceptable if it does not interfere with honest conveying of information.</li>
			<li><a href="./ask.html">Don't ask to ask.</a></li>
			<li>Use plain text email.  Both hard-wrapped and non-hard-wrapped emails are acceptable.  If you do hard-wrap, please wrap at 72 characters for English.  Chinese, if hard-wrapped, should be at 36 characters.  Non hard-wrapped emails should <a href="https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt">specify format=flowed as per RFC3676</a>.</li>
			<li>Interweave the original message with the response when replying to an email and remove irrelevant parts (i.e. greetings, closings, signatures, etc.) of the quoted original email.</li>
		</ol>
		<p>
		Please note that <a href="./wechat.html">WeChat is not a preferred way of contacting me</a>.  <a href="/contact.html">Use these instead</a>.
		</p>
		<div id="footer">
			<hr />
			<p><a href="/">Andrew Yu's Website</a></p>
		</div>
	</body>
</html>