I ran across this on another list I subscribed to, and, in light of the
current argument over whether there's too much noise on this list,
thought I'd let people see what most other mailing lists consider good
list etiquette. There's a few points in here that I think some people
could bear keeping in mind, or at least read through to realize other
people think they're a problem.
And for what it's worth, if it proves impossible to simply lower the
noise level around here, I'm in favor of the proposed three-list system,
where the fanfic list has replies set to the commentary list, and the
commentary list has replies set to the social list. That way, spam/noise
would tend to migrate to the social list, which not everyone would have
to subscrube to - but if someone wanted to reply to C&C with more C&C,
they could take the few seconds necessary to change the To: field - it's
just make them have to think about whether it's commentary or social chat.
=====
I'm on the list-managers mailing list and there was a recent thread on
mailing list etiquette. A few people have posted the etiquette files
for their lists. I've exerpted some bits from one of them that I think
are particularly applicable to our list. I think the one that caught
my eye was the one about prolific posters; there have been one or three
people that have been real bad about that (no, I'm not talking about
you Eric).
Comments: Authenticated sender is <amys@pop.iquest.net>
From: "Amy Stinson" <amys@iquest.net>
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 19:34:25 -0500
Subject: List Etiquette
Here is the "Netiquette" list guidelines I send whenever someone
joins my list. I have found this is very helpful for an overview of
how lists in general operate. I don't know if Jeff made these up,
but when he took over administration of the Mastercook lists he
posted these and I thought (as a list manager) that they were very
good and incorporated them into my list policy.
Amy
MAILING LIST GUIDELINES
The following are general guidelines for your behavior as a member
of the Machine-Knit Lists, as well as most other mailing lists. Your
cooperation with these guidelines will be appreciated by the list
moderators and fellow subscribers alike.
BROAD INTEREST: Don't send personal replies to the entire list.
The list has deliberately been configured so that replies by default
do NOT go to the whole list. If you choose to override the default,
please make sure that it is warranted, i.e., ask yourself if you are
including information that would be of interest to the list _in
general_. Even some information of general interest can be sent
only to the requester, if the requester promises to post a summary.
ETIQUETTE WHEN ASKING QUESTIONS: Request that answers be sent
directly to you, and offer to post summaries of responses.
Questions are fine--the access to a large number of people who might
answer them (though not necessarily consistently :-)) is one of the
biggest assets we have in the list. However, they also have the
potential for generating a lot of list traffic with bits and pieces
of answers. A good way to "get the best of both worlds," and also
for those who ask for the information and presumably benefit from it
to "return the favour" to the list, is to offer to post a summary or
compilation of the information back to the list.
Not only does this reduce piecemeal traffic, but your compilation
may make an excellent article for inclusion in the M-K Archives, or
FAQs that will be made available, or even so that other interested
people can store all the pertinent information in one mail
message.
AVOID TRIVIA: Please refrain from trivial responses (usually
characterized by being 1-2 lines long) after completely quoted
posts.
This is not to encourage you to be verbose if you can make a
point concisely, but most 1-2 line responses of late have seemed
rather trivial. When one is asking several hundred people to go
through your message (and the dozens of lines of quoted material
that typically accompanies these trivial messages), would it not
behoove one to put at least a little thought into the content?
Examples of trivial messages (unless accompanied by some further
elaboration): "Me [sic] too!" "I'm not sure if I would agree
with that." "Ha, Ha!" "I was wondering that too." These are
probably appropriate if sent *just* to the original poster, but
it really does little more than clutter up mailboxes if sent to
the whole list. (Many _questions_ ARE 1-2 lines long and
appropriately so--this guideline is not intended to apply to
questions.)
PROLIFIC POSTERS: Don't feel that you need to respond to _every_
message on which you have an opinion.
A lot of good information comes from some of the most frequent
contributors, and it is not atypical that the majority of people on
the list are "lurkers," and are quite happy to remain so. But
sometimes one sees an abundance of messages from the same person that
fall into the "trivial" category and it is then especially annoying.
One solution, if you really must add your two bits' worth to
_everything_, is to assemble these responses into a file, and post it
once a week. Even if you feel that you are making worthwhile and
well-considered statements with every posting, try not to dominate
the list with your own postings.
CONSIDERATION: Be aware of and considerate towards the _readers_.
Consider that when one posts an article, one is ostensibly doing it
either (i) for the benefit of the _other_ members of the list, or
(ii) to gain benefit from the other members of the list. In either
case, it seems that one should be considerate towards all these other
people. There are many little things you can do--here is just one
example:
+ Don't quote the entire article when mailing a follow-up note. It is
rarely needed since most people have seen the original. If you must,
do take the minute or two extra time to edit out all but the most
pertinent part of the original article. If your own contribution is
smaller than what you're quoting, you're probably quoting too much
[also see Avoid Trivia]. If your mailer does not make it easy to
do this, don't subject everyone else to its limitations. Learn how to
save the file, edit it separately and read it back into your reply.
Some people still have 2400 baud connections to their on-line
services and this can make a _big_ difference!
Most of the above was paraphrased and downright stolen with
permission from Jeff Mayzurk of Arion/Sierra Software.