ADMIN: posting guidelines

Tue Nov 1 08:42:14 PST 2005

Why do I always get two copies of your message? Is it to drive the message
further into my brain or have I shown I am a slow learner.
Herb DeLong
----- Original Message -----
From: <doug at hunley.homeip.net>
To: <linux-users at linux-sxs.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 4:40 AM
Subject: ADMIN: posting guidelines


> # linux-users at linux-sxs.org
>
> Posting Guidelines
>
>
> New list member?  Great!  Welcome!  Here's how to make best use of this
mailing list and get yourself a slice of the best Linux help available
anywhere.  Now read on ...
>
> ### TESTING YOUR SUBSCRIPTION
>
> Errm, first a delicate point.  Often users accessing a list like this for
the first time don't realize that mail doesn't show up immediately,
certainly not for several minutes, and maybe not for some hours.  In the old
days, it took as long as the camel bearing the news took!  So some tend to
post "test" messages.  Please don't!
>
> It really is a netiquette faux pas; it gets on the regulars' nerves and
will likely get you flamed. Especially empty test posts.  If you insist on
sending a test post, please entertain the regulars with a (not too off
color) joke, or entertaining story. Prepare to have your test post graded by
one of the regulars (a.k.a. old-timers).
>
>
> ### YOUR POST
>
> You may notice that we occasionally get many hundreds of mails a week
here. That's a lot of mail, and a lot of reading for the people who read
this list, who, after all, are the people who are going to answer your
questions.  So it's in your interest to reduce the amount of reading they
have to do.  Often, you can get an answer faster without posting your
question at all.
>
>
> Before you post, you should try:
>
>   1. Reading the manual for your system.
>
> Some day you will encounter the phrase "RTFM", which stands for "Read the
Fine Manual" (except 'F' doesn't really stand for "Fine").  If you ask
someone a question and they tell you to RTFM, it's an indication that you
haven't done your homework and you should look harder (or for the first
time) at the material they indicate.
>
> By the way, when these people use terminology like "read(2)", they are
referring to the man page in section 2 of the manual which deals with the
"read" command, and you would access this page by the command "man 2 read,"
typed at a command line. Yes, there is a command line. Let's not go through
that just now ...
> For the command line deficient out there who are running a recent version
of [KDE][1], you can just type man:read in the [Konqueror][2] URL bar for a
beautifully html-formatted man page.
>
>
> By the way, regular posters use a lot of acronyms. "BTW" means "by the
way", BTW.
> You can find useful acronyms on the [SxS][3] in the [Bedtime Reading][4]
section as follows:
> [http://www.linux-sxs.org/bedtime/acronym.html][5]
> [http://www.linux-sxs.org/bedtime/hadenuff.html][6]
> [http://www.linux-sxs.org/bedtime/fulllist.html][7]
> and then there's always
> [http://www.acronymfinder.com][8]
>
>
>   1. Searching the archives.
>
> Your question could very well have been answered in the past, because you
are not alone in the universe!  Other people have used the same software as
you.  Other people have bought the same hardware.
> Search the [SxS][9], by clicking the **Search** link at the top of the
page.
> No luck?
> Try [Google][10], fill in the search field with likely words, hit return
and see what comes up.
> What? Still no useful answer? You're out of luck, then. Naw ... perhaps
you just need to practice using search engines.  Use words that are likely
to get a response, and repeat the search refining the keywords each time you
until you get just the responses you want.  It's a very good idea to let
"Linux" be the first of them! For example:
>
>   linux mandrake faq
>
> should pull up references to a mandrake Linux faq.
> Still no success?  OK. Then you're down to
>
>
>   1. Posting on the list.
>
> How should you post?  Here is what the technical experts (and even many of
the list members) want to see:
> i) data, data, and data, but not your impressions.  That is, no "narrative
description" but instead an exact reproduction, by copy and paste with the
mouse, of each and every datum that you are basing your ideas of what is
going on on. Do not trust yourself to type! Use the mouse.  You will miss
data of great significance to others that will mislead (and possibly annoy)
them, such as a space, a capital letter, a digit instead of a letter, etc.,
etc.
>
> ii) This is already implied by the above, but include debug logs and/or
full error messages (repeat, the originals, not hand copies).  Do not
"attach" them.  Include them in-line in the text because people need to see
them simultaneously with your commentary, and in the context of your
narrative. Post a reasonable amount of those logs (rows <= 25). It is also
reasonable to post the logs to a publicly available web page if you really
think the entire log needs to be examined. Just provide a link to the
published log file in your mail. Most list members have access to the
Internet and the interested parties will be able to retrieve it.
>
>
> iii) Again, this was implied above, but it's worth emphasizing. ASCII
(text) is preferred by 4 out of 5 list members who read mail. Don't use HTML
or add any vcards or alike, unless you don't mind the ridicule. Some list
members read e-mail with character-based mail readers such as [Mutt][11], or
[Pine][12]. HTML-formatted mail is tough to read in those mail readers.
>
> iv) Another niggling issue with text only mail readers has to do with line
wrap. Some mailers don't automatically wrap incoming text. It looks really
awful when you're looking at a long paragraph with no line wrap set. If you
want the broadest possible audience, and to accommodate list members who
read with text-based mail readers (many of whom have the greatest technical
expertise that will be able to assist you with your problems) set your line
wrap so that it's easy to read, somewhere between 70 and 80 characters would
be good.
>
> ###  USEFUL SUBJECTS
>
> The Subject: line of a message is what will first attract people to read
it, if it's vague or doesn't describe what's contained within, no one will
read your mail.  They have better things to do with their life.
>
> However, Subject: lines that're too wordy tend to be irritating.
>
> For example:
>
> Good Subject:
>  "xinetd failure MDK 8.0, error:"cps time argument not  a number"
>
> Good Subject:
>  "bind 9.0 RH7.3 fails to cache multiple cnames"
>
> Bad Subject:
>  "Can't dial to Internet!!! Pulling my hair apart,  nothing works! HELP
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
>
> Bad Subject:
>  "HELP!!!! Ftp doesn't work for me at all, how come  !?!?!"
>
> Simply put, try to think of what will best help the reader when he or she
encounters your message to the list. Also think about who you want to
answer.  Do you want a psychiatrist?  No?  Then avoid "HELP !!!!" as a
subject line. If you want an expert in oracle databases, then post
> "oracle vX.Y on RH7.2. How assign passwd?".
>
> ### REPLYING, QUOTING & TRIMMING
>
> When following up to a message, many mail readers provide the facility to
quote the original message with each line prefixed by > , as in
>
> In article <1232 at foo.bar.com>, sharon at foo.bar.com wrote:
> >>>> I think that basketweaving's really catching on, particularly
> >>>> in Pennsylvania. Here's a list of every person in PA that
> >>>> currently engages in it publicly: [..]
>
> This example began to quote a horribly long article, but broke off and
indicated the missing text with ellipses "[..]". That's excellent posting
technique! i.e.
>
>   When you quote another person, edit out whatever isn't directly relevant
to understanding your reply.
>
> Please, please, remember to do that.
>
> This gives the reader of the new message a perfect idea of exactly what
points you were addressing.  By including the entire previous message,
you'll only annoy your readers, assuming you get any!  Who knows what your
"yes, I agree" is referring to if you quote all 100 lines of the original
text! Maybe you are agreeing that hanging is too good for shoplifters. Maybe
you are agreeing that it's a good morning.
>
> Now here's another part of good posting technique:
>
>   Always put your response below and between the quoted text!
>
> That means, as you read through the text you are replying to in your
editor, you remove the bits you are not interested in commenting on, then
when you come to a bit you want to comment on, you leave the relevant
sentence in place, add an empty line, and write your comment right below it,
then leave another empty line.
>
>
> Then you carry on through the rest of the text. You left the quote and
your comment nicely framed and easily comprehensible. Even more importantly,
you let somebody new come in and comment on your comment while keeping the
framing correct.
>
> Why NOT "top post"? Well, here are some answers:
>
>   [http://www.i-hate-computers.demon.co.uk/][13]
>   [http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html][14]
>   [http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html][15]
>
> In this editor's opinion, you have to understand that you are not writing
a business letter to another company's lawyers, which is about the only real
life situation in which you will affix the entire previous conversation to
the end of your reply! If you think so, then you are mistaking the nature of
the medium you are in - we likely already have access to your previous
message, thanks to the wonders of electronics, but we might not be bothered
to go and look at it or might have forgotten it and its detail, so we
appreciate a little orienting context in just the right place, but please
not the whole flipping thing.
>
> Note to digest readers:
> If you happen to be a digest reader, and you want to reply to a post, it
is very important that you not only trim the unrelated text from your reply,
but also change the subject line to indicate which particular subject within
the digest you happen to be responding to.
>
>
> ### OFF TOPIC POSTS
>
> It is not uncommon for list members to feel the need to offer up an Off
Topic post on occasion. It is common courtesy to amend the Subject: line
with something that would indicate the Off Topic-ness of the message. This
allows those list members who are not interested in your blathering on about
Aunt May to quickly move on to the next post. Some are even known to filter
out posts with "[OT]" in the Subject: line. Then again, this list has a high
tolerance for [OT] posts, and many list members, in fact, enjoy them. It
wouldn't be surprising to find that some members filter on [OT] just to read
those first.
>
> If you feel the need to really wander Off Topic, perhaps it'd be best to
move the thread to the [general][16] mailing list. You could even blather
away on our very own [irc server][17].
>
> In the context of this guideline, going Off-Topic on a thread should not
be confused with Thread Hijacking.
>
>
> ### THREAD HIJACKING
>
> "Thread Hijacking" is the process of starting a new thread by replying to
an existing one. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong
with that, but what this practice fails to take into consideration is that
most mail readers provide a thread view for messages. This allows readers to
display an entire subject thread in a neat and orderly fashion. Mail readers
thread based on header references, like
>  In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0503101825390.24928 at mail.linux-sxs.org>
> This particular header reference would indicate that the message is in
reply to a message with the ID of
"Pine.LNX.4.58.0503101825390.24928 at mail.linux-sxs.org."
> By employing thread hijacking to create a new message to the list, you
would cause your new message to appear in the middle of an entirely
unrelated thread when thread viewing is enabled in other list members' mail
readers.
> Never fear, however, there is an easy way to avoid this problem. You can
still post messages to the list, just use the New Mail (or similar) button
(or menu item, or keystroke) and compose your new message to
[linux-users at linux-sxs.org][18]. A new message, without any In-Reply-To
reference will be created, a new thread will be started and no hijacking
will have taken place.
>
>
> ### MORE INFO
>
> "ESR's How to ask smart questions"
> [http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html][19]
>
> "Netiquette Guidelines RFC1855"
> [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html][20]
>
>
> ### DISCLAIMER
>
> These "Posting Rules" (published under [GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE][21])
have been assembled/rewritten from various on line sources, it does not
claim to be complete, see URLs above, just a quick start.
>
> Special thanks to the authors of the usage guidelines for
comp.os.linux.setup, upon which this guideline is based:
> Peter T. Breuer and Michael Heiming (orginial authors) as well as Bill
Unruh, Bit Twister, Sybren Stuvel, and Peter Karlsson.
> Netiquette 2005-03#1
>
> Tim Wunder, Bill Davidson, Doug Hunley and Klaus-Peter Shrage also
contributed to revising the guideline to make it suitable for a mailing list
as opposed to a usenet newsgroup.
>
> **[The Linux-sxs.org Editors][22]
> **
>
> **Revision 20050310**
>
>
>    [1]: http://www.kde.org
>    [2]: http://www.konqueror.org
>    [3]: http://www.linux-sxs.org
>    [4]: http://www.linux-sxs.org/bedtime/
>    [5]: http://www.linux-sxs.org/bedtime/acronym.html
>    [6]: http://www.linux-sxs.org/bedtime/hadenuff.html
>    [7]: http://www.linux-sxs.org/bedtime/fulllist.html
>    [8]: http://www.acronymfinder.com
>    [9]: http://www.linux-sxs.org/
>    [10]: http://www.google.com/
>    [11]: http://www.mutt.org/
>    [12]: http://www.washington.edu/pine/
>    [13]: http://www.i-hate-computers.demon.co.uk/
>    [14]: http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html
>    [15]: http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/usenet/brox.html
>    [16]: http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman//listinfo/general
>    [17]: irc://irc.linux-sxs.org/linux-users
>    [18]: mailto:linux-users at linux-sxs.org
>    [19]: http://catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>    [20]: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html
>    [21]: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
>    [22]: mailto:editors at linux-sxs.org
>
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