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[LI] Posting guidelines



Here's some guidelines and rules for posting to these lists for
comment.  Feel free to adapt them to your style.  However, unless
there is a very compelling reason, try to adhere to these:

Guidelines
----------

- Format your message so that it fits within a 80-character window.
Long lines don't wrap well on many mail clients and cause difficulty
in reading your message.

- Put a blank line between paragraphs.  This makes your message easier 
to read and easier to reformat if necessary.

- Do not indent the first line of a paragraph.  If you follow the
previous guideline, paragraph breaks will be evident.

- Use full words, not abbreviations.  In addition to being difficult
to read, abbreviations raise questions about your commitment to what
you're posting.  Well-known acronyms are fine, but if you're not sure
that your readers will understand the acronym, expand it.

- Use a meaningful subject.  A single word like ``Help!'' doesn't help 
in understanding the nature of the problem, and may be skipped by a
person who may actually have been able to help you.

- Change the subject if you're changing the content of the message
drastically.

- Quote the original, but with discretion.  Give enough of the
original message to make the context of your posting clear, but do not 
quote the whole original unless absolutely necessary.

- Remove extras when quoting.  If the quoted message contained a
standard list trailer or a long signature, do remove it in your
response.  The trailer will get appended anew to your message in any
case.

- Use standard methods of quoting.  Ideally, use ">" as the quote
character.  This adheres to the USENET and e-mail standard and makes
it easy to distinguish multiple levels of quotes.  This is also
understood by most mail clients, who can then display the message
properly.  Using non-standard leading characters to distinguish quotes
(e.g. "*", "|", etc) can confuse many mailers.

- Use punctuation, but sparingly.  Multiple "!" or "?" marks add no
value to the message, but do succeed in turning off many recipients
(yours truly included).

- Use the following conventions to emphasise your text:

  This is *Bold text*

  This is /italicised text/

  This is _The_Name_of_a_Book_or_Magazine_

  This is SHOUTING AND NO ONE WILL LISTEN TO YOU IF YOU SHOUT!

  This is *an action I am doing*, e.g. *grinning, ducking and running*

[The difference between *...* used for bold and for denoting actions
is usually clear from context.  In general, it is preferable to use
/italics/ rather than *bold*]

- Give enough information to help your reader to help you if you're
posting about a problem.  Statements like, ``My Apache doesn't work''
are useless since they give no description of the problem, no idea
about the methods you tried to identify the problem, and no
information (logs, etc) which could help in diagnosing the problem.
Give enough information (how did you set it up, what did you do to
test it, what was the exact output, what did the logs contain, what
versions of software/hardware were you using, etc) to enable remote
diagnostics.

On the other hand, do not just attach /var/log/messages to your
message and expect people to download and wade through 11 MB of data.
If you don't have the time or energy to select meaningful information,
no one else has either.

- Do not send personal messages on the list.  Before you press the
send button (or S key, or whatever your mailer uses), spend a moment
to think about whether your message is of general interest or not.  If 
it isn't, convert it into a personal message going only to the
intended recipient and not to the list.

- Research your facts before you post solutions to the list.  If
you're not sure of the solution to a problem, either do not post, or
first make sure of all the steps and then post.  If you cannot make
sure, state very clearly in the message that you're not sure and that
the user is trying your solution at his/her own risk.  No solution is
preferable to a wrong solution, which may cause immense damage.

- Try to put yourself in the other person's shoes before you respond
to a message.  Ask yourself, ``Why did s/he write this?  What exactly
is s/he looking for?'' before jumping into a discussion.  Do this
especially if you're planning to respond at an emotional level --
emotions are fine (we're not robots), but frequent public displays of
strong emotion will have the effect of reducing your credibility.

- Do prefix messages which result in financial gain for anyone with
the tag [COMMERCIAL] in the subject line.

- It's OK to post off-topic once in a while, but the subject of the
message should be at least vaguely related to the interest of the
list.  E.g. looking for the e-mail of a fellow Linux coder whom you
have lost touch with years ago is fine, but looking for a flat in
Mumbai may not be.  Prefix the subject of off-topic messages with the
string [OFF-TOPIC].

Rules
-----

- Do not post non-textual messages.  Attachments such as HTML and
graphics, etc are frowned upon and sending non-text attachments can
result in your being banned from the list.

- Any other rules?

-- Raju
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