Mailing lists rules
These rules apply to all our mailing lists (e-mail conferences).
Subject
- Use cogent subject which expresses the content of the message and helps others with orientation in the mailing list.
- Never use meaningless subjects like „Help“ or „Question“ or even an empty subject.
- Do not use so called Emoji or other non-standard characters.
- You may use unicode characters like → „“ – or …, but plain ASCII is usually enough for the subject.
Threads
- Never „hijack“ the thread. If you want to discuss some new topic, always compose a new e-mail, do not respond to an existing thread (changing the subject is not enough).
- If there is some significant progress in the discussion, append some meaningful world to the subject or change it in other way.
- If you want to discuss more than one topic, rather send more e-mails with separate subjects and start separate threads.
- It is recommended to use an e-mail client which support threads (e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird).
Recipients
- Do not use „reply to all“ feature of your e-mail client. Just reply to the list address
xxxx@lists.globalcode.info(wherexxxxis the name of the list). - All subscribers (including the author) will receive the message – there is no need to add his address explicitly to the
Toheader and the list address to theCc. - Adding any personal address to the
ToorCcmakes sense only when such person is not a subscriber. But this should be quite rare – it is recommended to temporarily subscribe for given conversation in the mailing list.
Quotations
- Avoid top-posting. Do not write your answer on top of the text you are responding.
- Use in-line posting. Quote only necessary sentences of the original message and write you answer under them.
- You may quote nothing and send just your response (because we have threads).
- If you really and intentionally want to forward some message to the list, then you can write your message on top of it. But in most cases, you just should not do that.
- Others should then continue with in-line posting and quote only the relevant parts.
Message content
- Try to be brief and do not overwhelm others. Longer posts should be well-structured (bullets, headlines) and should have brief introduction, why and for who they are important.
- On the other hand, provide all the relevant information you have, in order to minimize the number of interactions (ping-pong). Many people read the e-mail once a day or less often, so providing all information in the first message significantly shortens the time to find the solution.
- Plain-text e-mails are preferred. (X)HTML formatting is allowed, but avoid external images or fancy styles.
- Do not use URL shorteners, always use the full target URL, so anyone will see the target address before clicking.
- Never send spam, affiliate links or messages unrelated to the topic of the list.
- Avoid fancy and long e-mail signatures (footers).
Miscellaneous
- Do not ask others to unsubscribe you. You can unsubscribe yourself. Either through the web interface or by sending the e-mail with the
unsubscribesubject to thexxxx-request@lists.globalcode.infoaddress (wherexxxxis the name of the list). - If you want to just try some formatting, commands or test whether the e-mail is working, use the mailman-playground list which is dedicated for such experiments and nobody will be annoyed there by them.
- If you want to respond to some message which was posted before you subscribed, you can find it in the archive and respond there (from the web interface) or click on „Use email button“ and respond using your favorite e-mail client (please first test this feature in the playground list, to be sure that your e-mail client properly handles the
In-Reply-Toheader; e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird works well) - Please note that most of the mailing lists and their archives are public.
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