[announce] Basic Etiquette Reminder

[Deb Richardson]

Hi all.

I hate to have to do this, but it seems like it's time for the "friendly
reminder" again.

While there are only two posting guidelines for the LinuxChix lists ( 1.
Be Friendly, 2. Be Helpful ), there are some more general guidelines
that should be followed when posting to a mailing list.

1.  Plain Text Only.  

This means: no HTML-format.  If you have the option to change the
colours of your fonts, chances are that you're sending in HTML. 
Unfortunately, many people read their email using clients that will not
display HTML properly, so your message ends up being displayed along
with the HTML tags.  This makes it basically unreadable, and most people
will delete your message without even bothering to try to read it.  So:
Plain Text Email only.  If you don't know how to send in plain text
only, please refer to the documentation that came with your email
client.  Until you have switched to plain text, please refrain from
sending to the LinuxChix mailing lists.  Thanks.

2.  Stay On Topic.

There have been some recent comments that the lists are drifting off
topic.  This is to be avoided.  If you're not sure which list is for
which topic, please refer to the LinuxChix Mailing List information page
here:

http://www.linuxchix.org/docs/listinfo.html

If you're not sure which list you should be posting to, send it to the
"grrltalk" list, and if it's more appropriate for a different list,
someone will likely move the discussion to the proper list.  

3.  Prune Your Responses

It's really easy to just hit "reply" type in a couple of lines, then hit
"send", but this is actually considered rude, especially if you're
responding to a longer post.  When sending a response, cut down the
amount of text you are quoting from the original message.  You should
only have to leave a line or two to set up the context for your
response.  If people need to refer to the other message to jog their
memories a bit more, that's okay -- if they don't have a copy of the
original message, there are archives of all the lists available.

Under most circumstances a few lines will be sufficient to remind people
about the context of your response.  There are times when it is
appropriate to quote larger amounts of text, but these are relatively
rare.  

Pruning your posts saves on the amount of scrolling people have to do,
on the amount of data to be downloaded, and on the size of the
archives.  Many people, seeing a message that is mostly quoted text,
will simply delete your message without bothering to sift through it
looking for your response.  Trust me, pruning is better than not
pruning.

Okay.  I think that's covered the most recent complaints.  If anyone
else would like to complain about something, feel free to email me
(deb at linuxchix.org) at any time.  :)

Thanks!  Have fun!  I'm going to bed now :>

- deb

-- 
deb at thepuffingroup.com
deb at linuxchix.org
deb at oswg.org

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