andrewyu.org Mailing List Guidelines

The following guidelines apply to most public mailing lists on andrewyu.org (link might still be WIP). Different lists may have different specific guidelines.

• Be considerate of other subscribers on the mailing lists.
• Plain text, preferrably 72 characters per line.
  Many subscribers and maintainers read their mail on text-based mailers like mail(1), emacs, mutt, etc., and they often find HTML-formatted messages (or lines that stretch beyond 72 characters) unreadable. Many mailing lists strip messages of MIME content before sending them out to the rest of the list. If you don't use plain text, your messages will be reformatted. If they cannot be reformatted, they will be summarily rejected. Use attachments with care, they will be removed from messages on some lists.
• Include a useful Subject line.
  Messages with an empty Subject will get bounced to the list manager and will take longer to show up. Including a relevant Subject in the message will ensure that more people actually read what you've written. Also, avoid Subject lines with excessive uppercase and exclamations. "Help!" or "I can't get it to work!" are not useful subject lines. Do not change the subject line while on the same topic. You may know what it is regarding, the rest of us who get several hundred messages a day will have no idea.
• Trim your signature.
  Keep the signature lines at the bottom of your mail to a reasonable length. PGP signatures should be attachments rather than inline.
• Stay on topic.
  Please keep the subject of the post relevant to the topic of the mailing list.
• Include important information for questions.
  Don't waste everyone's time with a hopelessly incomplete question. No one other than you has the information needed to resolve your problem, it is better to provide more information than needed than not enough detail.
• Respect differences in opinion and philosophy.
  Intelligent people may look at the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. Repeating the same points that didn't convince someone previously rarely changes their mind, and irritates all the other readers.
• No spam.
• Interweave quoted original messages with replies.
  Post inline, and trim quotes. This means that your replies are interspersed with the original mail, and any irrelevant content is removed (trimmed):

  From: A
  Subject: Re: S
  To: B
  CC: list
  
  B wrote:
  > ...
  > Do you think that this is correct?
  
  Yes, I believe so.
  
  > How about iterating through the items and applying the function to each of them?
  
  Sounds good.

• Reply to the list.
  For most discussions that are not going wildly off-topic and still may be of interest to those in the list, CC the list so others can follow up. However, as it suggests, if things are going to be irrelevant to the list's topic, reply in private.