Etiquette, E-mail lists, Barron Park (Neighborhood) Association, Palo Alto, California, USA

Etiquette, E-mail lists, Barron Park (Neighborhood) Association

Terminology: Network Etiquette often referred to as "Netiquette"

Index

Mailing List Guidelines
Advice on SPAM
Other Resources: other pages of advice
Freedom of Speech
Internet and Community Organizations/Activism
bottom of page

Mailing List Guidelines

Index
- Form and Content
- Civility
  - Tone Lost
  - "This is just the way I talk"
  - Adding missing information
  - Handling incivility
  - Handling misrepresentation
  - How to Be a Curmudgeon on the Internet by David Pogue (New York Times, 19-January-2006)
Before sending a message, ask yourself:
- Does the message contribute enough new information or perspective to be worth reading by more than 100-400 other people?
  - Messages to the list of the form "Me too" are to be avoided.
  - Do not repeat what has already been covered simply to participate in the thread or to have the last word.
  - One person who thinks that he must have the last word and the most words on any topic can destroy a list by driving people to unsubscribe. Two such people will invariably destroy a list.
- Is the message adequately composed to convey the information. Note "adequately" not "perfectly". Read what you have written before sending it.
  - Avoid needing to send corrections and clarifications.
  - Check the tone of the message.
Scan-able messages: Make your messages scan-able, starting with the subject line. Do not abuse other people's time.
- Background: One of the advantages of e-mail is it makes it easily for you to monitor more topics for useful information. The corresponding curse is that you can get far more e-mail than you can read. The most common way of handling the flood of e-mail is to quickly scan a message to see if it deserves further reading, and if not, delete it.
- Meaningful/descriptive subject: Do NOT simply reply to an unrelated message to the list (thereby inheriting its subject line). Give topic area. Where appropriate include category area, such as
  - News
  - Opinion
  - FYI
  - Humor (if appropriate to a list)
- Highlight key points: For example, the announcement of an event should have fields for common items such as Brief description< Date+Time, Location, Sponsor, and a contact (phone and/or email) for additional information. These should be bullet'ed, not a rambling paragraph.
- Delimited sections and topics: In most cases, it is best to limit an e-mail message to a single topic. This simplifies others replying to the message, and makes it simpler for someone to decide whether or not the message is relevant to him/her.
  If you need to include multiple topics, or the information is multi-faceted, add headings to clearly mark the location of the various subsections.
- Read the message from the perspective of someone receiving it who has not just read the email that you have. Just because you know what you mean to say, doesn't mean that anyone else can figure it out.
- Most current mail programs support spelling (and grammar) checking. Use them.

Avoid using Microsoft Word to compose email messages. It is unnecessary and can cause significant problems for many recipients. Most mail programs provide a simpler text processor for composing messages.
- There are many version of Microsoft Word, and the membership has versions spanning many years. Different versions can produce significantly different formatting (especially in font and font size) that can alter how the document is interpreted.
- Many members have alternatives to Microsoft Word (for example, Word Perfect and Open Office) that have similar differences in rendering documents.
Honor the threads: A thread is a message and the replies to that message.
- Many mail readers and archiving program provide the option of reading messages in threads. Advantages:
  - Allows reading of all messages on one topic instead shifting from topic to topic, or having to scan through mailbox for messages on the topic.
  - Puts message in logical order. Heavily loaded mail servers can jumble the order of messages.
    For example, user B can reply to a message from user A before A's message has been delivered to everyone on the list, and B's reply may arrive in some user's mailboxes before the original message from A.
- Threads are created based upon either the subject line or the Message-id in the message header. This is handled automatically by all modern mail readers.
  - When your message is a reply to a previous message on the list, use the reply command so that these values are set correctly.
  - Do not send messages that are not replies as if they were - people who have stopped reading that thread will not see it.
- Splitting off a new thread: Often the discussion in a thread shifts reply by reply until it becomes a new topic. When this happens, the best way to handle this is to use a bridging subject line:
  New-Subject [Was RE: Old-Subject ]
Quoting previous messages
- When replying to a message, it is useful to include the relevant portion.
  - Many people read their e-mail messages in the order received, rather than as threads.
  - Different people on the mailing list can receive messages in different orders. Some people may even receive the reply before they receive the message being replied to.
  - Hence, recipient may have problems locating the message being replied to, or may have difficulty deciding which of several messages is the one being replied to.
- But do not include more of the original message than needed. Delete the sections not relevant to your reply, marking the deleted sections with "..." (dot-dot-dot) whenever there could be any question that part of the original message has been omitted.
- When you are replying to one or more individual passages in a previous message, it is often best to put your reply to each immediately after the corresponding message.
- If you are including portion of the message being replied to only to provide context for your reply, put your reply first in the message. This saves the readers from having to scroll through passages that they have already read to get to your content.
When to take it offline:
- When a thread becomes dominated by the back-and-forth between a small number of people, it is typically time for that group direct their messages to just each other, omitting the list. If a resolution is reached, posting a summary to the list is appropriate.
  Examples of when it is time to go offline
  - Discussion of minutae
  - Extended discussion of interpretation of facts or statements
  - Speculation about what the facts are
- The list is not an appropriate way to collect responses to a poll.
  It is very appropriate to propose a poll in which other members of the list respond privately to you, with you then taking posting a summary of the results to the list.
  If someone is conducting a poll by this method, heed the request to reply privately, not to the list.
Tone lost: One of the most common observations about e-mail is the ease with which misunderstandings arise because someone read a different tone into a message than was intended. Many people behave like e-mail was a face-to-face conversation, forgetting that tone of voice and body language are not conveyed by the message. Humor, satire and parody are easily mistaken for serious comments, and vice versa.
Thus, it is incumbent on the sender to not assume that the reader will guess what tone is intended, and it is incumbent on the reader to be open-minded about the tone the author intended.
"This is just the way I am": Many people have dropped off the BPA lists because of the confrontational and highly argumentative tone taken by a few individuals. When asked to moderate the tone of their messages, they refused on the grounds that "This is just the way I am, everyone knows it, and knows not to take it seriously." This belief is demonstrably false on two grounds.
Remember that it is a rare mailing list where you are personally well-known to all the other subscribers.
Adding missing information: E-mail messages are intended to be brief, and the author must trim out peripheral detail. This involves choices about what information is and is not critical to the topic at hand. If the author does not mention an item that you regard as relevant, do not assume that he is ignorant those facts. For example, if someone sends a message about an act of vandalism and asking anyone observed relevant suspicious activity, it is grossly inappropriate to send a reply to the list upbraiding the sender for not knowing and/or detailing the historical importance of the item vandalized -- its historical value likely has no relevance to whether someone saw anything suspicious.
Just as in other discussions, new information and new considerations can be added to an e-mail discussion without denigrating the other participants.
Handling incivility: Basic rules:
- Complain to the individual, not the whole list. Complaining to the list often has the unfortunate consequence of generating a prolonged debate on etiquette and civility which then causes people to drop off the list.
  However, if the general situation is deteriorating, a public response to a significant case of incivility can be useful in getting things back on track. Such messages typically come from one of the key members of the list ("key" varies from list to list).
- If someone complains to you about a violation of civility, apologize. Arguing or trying to excuse your behavior typically creates the perception that the abusive behavior was intentional.
  A private apology may be adequate, or you may want to send a brief apology to the list. Remember, if one person notified you that you had behaved badly, there are probably others with a similar view that did not notify you.
Handling misrepresentation: pending

Other Resources

This is a partial, unordered collection. Much useful guidance, but not tightly targeted on the types of interactions that occur on a specific list.
This is the basic material that is (used to be?) part of the introductory packet for new users on the Internet.

News.announce.newusers official archive: A good collection for the new user, and a good refresher for many experienced users.
The most relevant of these pages are explicitly referenced below.
Hints on writing style for Usenet (applies to both E-mail and NetNews)
A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community (a good collection of key rules)
Basic E-Mail Etiquette from Information Technology Digest of February 1997 via Chi Alpha Campus Ministries at the University of Michigan.
E-Mail Etiquette
Stand Up Straight and Learn Your E-mail Manners (from Microsoft)
The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette by Arlene H. Rinaldi
Netiquette Guidelines RFC 1855, from Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working Group of the IETF
Local copy
Dear Emily Postnews (satirical) Heavily oriented towards etiquette in newsgroups with some relevance to mailing lists
Networking on the Network by Phil Agre : "includes good advice accumulated from dozens of people over many years, and I want to get it into the hands of every PhD student in the world. If you could help me out with this goal, I would much appreciate it."
Good generic advice on interactions
Overcome Email Overload has useful collection of links and some FAQs (site's primary focus is on the hardcopy books of the same name)

"Freedom of Speech" and E-Mail Lists/NewsGroups

Personal observations by Doug Moran (who is also the manager of the BPA lists)

Internet and Community Organizations/Activism

Version Info: $Revision: 1.23 $ $Date: 2002/10/09 07:32:20 $

Copyright 2000 by Douglas B. Moran
Permission to make digital or hard copy of part or all of this work is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, that the copyright notice and the URL of this World Wide Web page are maintained, and that notice is given that copying is by permission of the copyright holder. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior specific permission and/or fee.
(Rationale)