[wplug] Re: A gentle reminder on posting etiquette

[Jonathan Billings]

Greg Simkins wrote:
> Is it really etiquette or are we trying to minimize duplication for the 
> email digest?  I have a hard time being offended over whether comments 
> are posted at the top or bottom.  It is good to keep the messages short 
> for the purposes of following it.

I think that people ask for good "netiquette" when posting to mailing 
lists mostly to make them as useful for others, and make the list a 
better learning tool for others.  If you want others to read your 
message, be polite and respect common email etiquette.

> In my little microsoft world, I am very accustomed to hitting the reply 
> button and typing above the entire thread.  In fact, I get horribly 
> confused when I get email from folks at AOL which seems to default to 
> drop the previous parts of the thread and I can be totally lost over 
> what the subject of the comment is.

I think a lot of poor posting etiquette comes from poorly designed mail 
readers, but there are a lot of choices out there for email clients.  I 
realize that some people are constrained by their work environment to 
what client the must use, but no one is forcing you to use your work 
email address for mailing lists.

> So please clarify whether the rules you are debating are to avoid some 
> sort of offense or to save bytes of storage on the WPLUG mail server.

For what its worth, a well written text-only message is still only a 
couple of kilobytes of data on the disk.  Since each message is only 
stored once on the WPLUG server, it really is an inconsequential amount 
of data when you look at modern disk sizes.  Also, I doubt anyone is 
really offended by poor email etiquette, most likely they're just 
annoyed, and your message isn't read.

I doubt it will ever come down to there being some sort of Rulebook or 
bylaw amendment for posting etiquette.  It really is a more dynamic 
social environment, where you get feedback from others to help you shape 
your future behavior.  I know I have a tendency to go off on 
trivialities, and I've been contacted off-list by other members telling 
me to lighten up.  I guess that's how social groups work.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>