Subscribing and Unsubscribing - Send subscribe and unsubscribe messages to the appropriate address. Although some mailing list software is smart enough to catch these, not all can ferret these out. It is your responsibility to learn how the lists work, and to send the correct mail to the correct place. Although many many mailing lists adhere to the convention of having a "-request" alias for sending subscribe and unsubscribe messages, not all do. Be sure you know the conventions used by the lists to which you subscribe. - Save the subscription messages for any lists you join. These usually tell you how to unsubscribe as well. - Consider unsubscribing or setting a "nomail" option (when it's available) when you cannot check your mail for an extended period. Ownership - Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet provider, be sure to check with your employer about ownership of electronic mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail vary from place to place. Security - Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a mail message anything you would not put on a postcard. Privacy - Some mailing lists are private. Do not send mail to these lists uninvited. Do not report mail from these lists to a wider audience. - If you find a personal message has gone to a list or group, send an apology to the person and to the group. Copyright - Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every country has copyright laws. International - Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across the globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate response, the person receiving it might be at home asleep when it arrives. Give them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the mail didn't arrive or that they don't care. - Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture, language, and humor may have different points of reference from your own. Remember that date formats, measurements, and idioms may not travel well. Be careful with slang, local acronyms and especially sarcasm. Style - Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a carriage return. - Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOU'RE SHOUTING. - Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use underscores for underlining. _War and Peace_ is my favorite book. - Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly. :-) is an example of a smiley (Look sideways). Don't assume that the inclusion of a smiley will make the recipient happy with what you say or wipe out an otherwise insulting comment. - Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in messages unless they are MIME attachments or unless your mailer encodes these. If you send encoded messages make sure the recipient can decode them. - Be careful with monospacing fonts and diagrams. These will display differently on different systems, and with different mailers on the same system. Address - Be careful when addressing mail. There are addresses that may go to the list but the address looks like it is just one person. Know to whom you are sending. Subject - Mail should have a subject heading which reflects the content of the message. - Subject lines should follow the conventions of the group. - When posting a long message it's good practice to include the word "Long" in the subject header so the recipients know the message will take time to read and respond to. Over 100 lines is considered "long". Content - Messages and articles should be brief and to the point. Don't wander off-topic, don't ramble and don't send mail or post messages solely to point out other people's errors in typing or spelling. These, more than any other behavior, mark you as an immature beginner. - Know how large a message you are sending. Including large files such as Postscript files or programs may make your message so large that it cannot be delivered or at least consumes excessive resources. A good rule of thumb would be not to send a file larger than 50 Kilobytes. Consider file transfer as an alternative, or cutting the file into smaller chunks and sending each as a separate message. - Don't send large files to mailing lists when Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or pointers to ftp-able versions will do. If you want to send it as multiple files, be sure to follow the culture of the group. If you don't know what that is, ask. - If you ask a question, be sure to post a summary. When doing so, truly summarize rather than send a cumulation of the messages you receive. Replying - If you are sending a reply to a message be sure you summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure readers understand when they start to read your response. It is possible to see a response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not include the entire original! - Be careful when you reply to messages. Frequently replies are sent back to the address that originated the post - which in many cases is the address of a list or group! You may accidentally send a personal response to a great many people, embarrassing all involved. It's best to type in the address instead of relying on "reply." - Avoid sending messages that are no more than gratuitous replies to replies. - The auto-reply feature of many mailers is useful for in-house communication, but quite annoying when sent to entire mailing lists. Examine "Reply-To" addresses when replying to messages from lists. Most auto-replys will go to all members of the list. - In general, it's a good idea to at least check all your mail subjects before responding to a message. Sometimes a person who asks for help (or clarification) will send another message which effectively says "Never Mind". Forwarding - If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you've received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to the list, you should ask permission first. You may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you give proper attribution. - If your mail system allows you to forward mail, beware the dreaded forwarding loop. Be sure you haven't set up forwarding on several hosts so that a message sent to you gets into an endless loop from one computer to the next to the next. Cross-posting - When sending a message to more than one mailing list, especially if the lists are closely related, apologize for cross-posting. Flaming - A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these "flames") even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldn't be surprised if you get flamed and it's prudent not to respond to flames. - Don't get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to incendiary material. - If you are caught in an argument, keep the discussion focused on issues rather than the personalities involved. - If you should find yourself in a disagreement with one person, make your responses to each other via mail rather than continue to send messages to the list or the group. If you are debating a point on which the group might have some interest, you may summarize for them later. - Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via FLAME ON/OFF enclosures. For example: FLAME ON: This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth it takes to send it. It's illogical and poorly reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with me. FLAME OFF Abuse - Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator if your ever receive one. - The cost of delivering an e-mail message is, on the average, paid about equally by the sender and the recipient (or their organizations). This is unlike other media such as physical mail, telephone, TV, or radio. Sending someone mail may also cost them in other specific ways like network bandwidth, disk space or CPU usage. This is a fundamental economic reason why unsolicited e-mail advertising is unwelcome (and is forbidden in many contexts). - Don't send large amounts of unsolicited information to people. - Forgeries and spoofing are not approved behavior. - Just as mail (today) may not be private, mail are (today) subject to forgery and spoofing of various degrees of detectability. Apply common sense "reality checks" before assuming a message is valid. - Sexually and racially harassing messages may have legal implications. There is software available to filter items you might find objectionable. Advertising - Advertising is welcomed on some lists, and abhorred on others! This is another example of knowing your audience before you post. Unsolicited advertising that is completely off-topic will most certainly guarantee that you get a lot of hate mail. Signatures - Make things easy for the recipient. Many mailers strip header information, which includes your return address. In order to ensure that people know who you are, be sure to include a line or two at the end of your message with contact information. You can create this file ahead of time and add it to the end of your messages. (Some mailers do this automatically.) In Internet parlance, this is known as a ".sig" or "signature" file. Your .sig file takes the place of your business card. Keep your signature short. Rule of thumb is no longer than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay. Support - Know whom to contact for help. Usually you will have resources close at hand. Check locally for people who can help you with software and system problems. Also, know whom to go to if you receive anything questionable or illegal. Most sites also have "Postmaster" aliased to a knowledgeable user, so you can send mail to this address to get help with mail. General Guidelines - Read the list for one to two months before you post anything. This helps you to get an understanding of the culture of the group. - Do not blame the system administrator for the behavior of the system users. - Consider that a large audience will see your posts. That may include your present or your next boss. Take care in what you write. Remember too, that mailing lists are frequently archived, and that your words may be stored for a very long time in a place to which many people have access. - Assume that individuals speak for themselves, and what they say does not represent their organization (unless stated explicitly). - Remember that mail takes system resources. Pay attention to any specific rules covering their uses your organization may have. - Delivery receipts, non-delivery notices, and vacation programs are neither totally standardized nor totally reliable across the range of systems connected to Internet mail. They are invasive when sent to mailing lists, and some people consider delivery receipts an invasion of privacy. In short, do not use them. - In general, it's not possible to retrieve messages once you have sent them. Even your system administrator will not be able to get a message back once you have sent it. This means you must make sure you really want the message to go as you have written it.