New subject: FAQ: Participating in this mailing list

Saturday, 20 February 2016

It's about time someone posted something like this, yet I can't ever
recall seeing FAQs sent to this list, it may as well be me:

It is much preferred that participants to mailing lists write, and
reply, to messages in the manner the majority prefers, and the manner
that the list instructions told you to use in the first place.  You're
expecting help from others, it's polite to make the effort to fit in.
You will probably not get as much help, perhaps from those who have the
most useful answers, if you don't.

When replying, write your responses underneath what you're replying to.
So that *whoever* next reads the message, can read the whole thing in
order, from top to bottom, in a clear and coherent manner.  Either write
your responses directly under the specific bits of the message that
you're responding to (interspersed posting).  Or, entirely below the
prior message (bottom posting), though this makes it harder for people
work out what your responses are related to.  i.e. To make it easier to
follow a message, make it read like a conversation.

And edit out any extraneous stuff from prior messages that doesn't need
to be quoted.  It's a waste, and makes reading the message more
cumbersome.  It does not matter where your mail program leaves the
cursor when you hit reply, use your fingers to change it's position, and
cut and erase unneeded text as you go along.

HTML messages are not preferred.  They cause problems, and waste far
more bandwidth and storage space than simpler text-only message.

For more information, look at the links provided (below) from the
mailing list, itself: