[bookport] A Short Primar on Mailing List Etiquette
- From: "Eric StevenS" <sseric57@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:06:56 -0500
I hope everyone can benefit from this, but selfishly me most of all. This
list is quite active and can offer great information to everyone, but some
here abuse our time with just the kinds of mail warned against in the
attached. Hopefully, this will be helpful in our other lists, too. It is
too bad when we have to forgo taking full advantage of a product, etc.
because we simply cannot make the time to wade through the unnecessary,
unhelpful, or off-topic postings.
Digital Web Magazine - How to Write Effective Mailing List Email.
Digital Web Magazine
The web professional's online magazine of choice.
How to Write Effective Mailing List Email.
In:
Articles
By
Matt Haughey
Published on December 28, 2001
With every passing day, increasing numbers of people are becoming web
designers. One of the main forums for communication among web designers,
both beginners
and experts alike, is the mailing list. Most mailing lists generate a
substantial stream of useful, information-laden email, and the good ones
enjoy a
healthy gift economy. I'm subscribed to a small handful of web-related
discussion lists, and the busier ones average 20-40 messages per day. My
favorite
list contains more useful information in a month's worth of postings than
any best selling web design book. Even when I'm not asking or answering a
question,
I can follow fascinating threads, picking up useful tidbits, and build rich
archives of searchable information. When I ask a question, no less than two
or three expert answers will appear within a few hours. The people that read
lists are often successful designers and busy experts in our field.
Yet even the best lists have their share of problems. I could pontificate
all day on the nature of interpersonal communication, conduct, and
netiquette,
but instead I want to focus on email content formatting.
Why is formatting so important?
The sum of my personal, work-related, and web discussion list mail is about
100-150 messages per day. In order to get through that deluge, I
automatically
filter every message into one of several categories, then into one of about
20 folders within each category. Even though I organize all my messages,
going
through a mailing list folder's 20+ new messages becomes a chore when most
messages are improperly formatted. A properly formatted message is easy to
read.
It's easy to respond to, and is most likely to be read by everyone and
answered in a timely fashion.
So how do I format my messages?
There are several rules you can follow to improve the readability of your
mailing list messages. The best place to start is to first read "
The Beginner's Guide to Effective email"
(don't let the name fool you, a seasoned expert could learn something from
it as well). In addition to the information covered in that document, there
are
several other things to keep in mind that are specific to web design mailing
lists.
1. Quoting
Quote messages properly. The guide referenced above has
a pretty good explanation of proper quoting
(scroll down the page about halfway for the section on quoting). Basically,
when you're going to answer a question, hit reply on your email client, then
delete every bit of the original post except for their question. Make your
quoting as short as possible, but enough to properly explain the question.
If
someone explained their problem in two paragraphs and then wrote a question
at the end, I delete it all except for the question and maybe a sentence or
two from the explanation. I like to quote enough of a question so that
someone that has missed the original post can figure out what someone was
asking
and see my answer below.
Proper trimming and quoting is especially true for digest versions of a
mailing list. Some folks choose to receive a single message with a day or a
few
days' posts on them. It seems to happen once a month or so, but someone will
reply to the digest version, leaving all messages quoted. Everyone on the
list will have to download and read a 60kb-100kb message just to read
someone's comments, and worse yet, that post will go in the next day's
digest, compounding
the problem.
Also remember to trim the ends of messages off. Most all mailing lists
append every message with a special signature. This may be a couple, to
several lines
of text. If you ever catch yourself responding to a question and leaving
that footer in, before you hit send, ask yourself why. If it conveys no
additional
information, as your answer will have it appended as well, why include it?
It is useless and should be trimmed when replying (remember, your reply will
carry a copy of the footer too, so if it's useful once, it's useless when
displayed two or more times).
2. Top Down Formatting
When you read a question in a message and want to answer it, you hit reply
and your cursor is usually at the top of a new message, with the original
quoted
below. If you start typing, your answer is displayed above the original. In
fact, every email client I've ever used encourages you to write text above
an original message when replying. Why is that? This is probably the most
important point I want to make. Don't write replies above the original
message,
ever. Compose replies below the original message.
Imagine this example: if you left a note on the fridge for your roommates
saying "When is the rent due?" and someone responded "On the first of the
month,
stupid", would they write it above or below your original question? How do
people on this planet read text? Some do it left-to-right, some
right-to-left,
but when it comes to the vertical direction, everyone reads from the top
down.
There's nothing more time consuming for me than to read an email that looks
like this:
From: sara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sounds great. Sure, I'd love to go
> Sara - I have some of the mockups ready for the new Acme Designs
> Website. I have a meeting with the producer and one of the client
> reps tomorrow downtown. I'll be near your office building, do you
> want to meet to discuss our web-based project over lunch? What
> time is best for you?
>
> Matt
Reading a message like that requires me to remember the question asked, and
in what context. If I can't remember, I have to scroll down read my original
post (if the recipient included it, this is even worse when they don't
include the original in replies). Reading a answer like this, after
scrolling down
to read the question, then back up for the answer is time consuming and if I
get a few dozen messages like this a day, I won't have time for much more
than reading email. Often times, a short answer such as Sara's email will
miss some of the questions in the original post. Proper formatting could
solve
these problems and make life easier for both parties.
That same message would be so much easier on the reader if Sara would have
sent it like this:
From: sara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
At 12:15PM, on Monday Dec. 3, 1999, Matt wrote:
> I'll be near your office building, do you
> want to meet to discuss our web-based project over lunch?
Sounds great. Sure, I'd love to go
>What time is best for you?
My schedule is free in the afternoon, just give me a call at 555-1212 - Sara
3. HTML/richtext email
My current email reader can display HTML email, but it's not a browser and
doesn't do a very good job of it. I can quickly notice when an email comes
in
with HTML formatting because the fonts will usually be too small or in a
serif family that contrasts to the big sans-serif font I read mail with.
Sometimes
an email message looks perfectly fine except for a silly signature font, or
even a small picture.
There are numerous reasons why HTML email is bad, but on a mailing list, you
want as many people to read your message as possible. To meet that goal, you
have to go for the lowest common denominator, plain text. Some people may be
using PINE or some other Unix mailer that displays HTML as code, with a
message
buried deep inside code. A busy mailing list member confronted with this
situation will just delete your mail, or more likely, ignore and move onto
more
accessible messages. HTML email also means that your two-kilobyte text
message can quickly balloon into a 15-kilobyte file that everyone on the
list has
to download. Having an HTML-aware email application also means that sending
code can be buggy. A mailing list is a natural place to ask questions about
JavaScript functions or how to troubleshoot a difficult table, but many
email readers will parse code, leaving readers with malformed messages or
blank
screens filled with JavaScript errors.
If you have any doubts about how to turn off all special email formatting in
your email client, try checking the
Rootsweb
site's
How to Turn OFF HTML or RTF in Various E-mail Software Programs
article.
4. Reply length
It's also important to think about the length of your replies. All too
often, I'll see short, single sentence replies to complex questions, or
short thank
you notes to people that posted answers. If you're sending a reply to a list
that's only a sentence long, ask yourself if it's appropriate before
sending.
When list members get a new message, it takes some effort to read that
message. If the answer is a shot in the dark, or so brief to have to be
explained
in subsequent emails, something is wrong. Also, thank you notes don't really
benefit any of the list members besides the person that answered the
question.
Send those thank you notes off list, directly to the person that answered
the question.
5. Signatures
Signature files are generally a good thing, usually conveying additional
contact information or a URL that other list members can look at to get a
better
idea of who that person is. Your sig can let others know what you've been up
to lately, what new sites you've done, and what site you call home.
Signature
files become a problem when they are excessively long, taking up much of a
message's space. First off, remember to keep them less than 80 characters in
width, to prevent the text from wrapping. A safe number for non-wrapping
text would be in the range of 70-72 characters. Try to keep signatures in
the
three-to-six line range of length. When a sig file takes up 12 lines of
text, and the original message is just a sentence or two, it becomes hard to
separate
the message from the signature. Originally, sig files were kept short to
keep bandwidth down. With the advent of faster networks, this isn't much of
a
problem anymore, but it's still important to keep a short sig file to keep
your messages concise and as readable as possible.
Closing Thoughts
If you consider these tips the next time you participate in a mailing list
discussion, I guarantee more people will read and understand your messages,
leading
to more and better answers from other members. These tips will also make you
a more considerate list member, as you'll be saving people time and keeping
your bandwidth use low. Enjoy and good luck out there.
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