Netiquette Guidelines
(Click on the link above for the entire document)
- Be careful when addressing mail. There are addresses which may go to a
group but the address looks like it is just one person. Know to whom you are
sending.
- Watch cc's when replying. Don't continue to include people if the messages
have become a 2-way conversation.
- Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you
should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a mail
message anything you would not put on a postcard.
- Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every country
has copyright laws.
- If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you've received, do not
change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are
re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You may shorten the
message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you give proper
attribution.
- Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden
on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked. Notify your local
system administrator if your ever receive one.
- A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what
you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these
"flames") even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you
shouldn't be surprised if you get flamed and it's prudent not to respond to
flames.
- In general, it's a good idea to at least check all your mail subjects
before responding to a message. Sometimes a person who asks you for help (or
clarification) will send another message which effectively says "Never
Mind". Also make sure that any message you respond to was directed to
you. You might be cc:ed rather than the primary recipient.
- Make things easy for the recipient. Many mailers strip header information
which includes your return address. In order to ensure that people know who
you are, be sure to include a line or two at the end of your message with
contact information. You can create this file ahead of time and add it to
the end of your messages. (Some mailers do this automatically.) In Internet
parlance, this is known as a ".sig" or "signature" file.
Your .sig file takes the place of your business card. (And you can have more
than one to apply in different circumstances.)
- Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across the
globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate response, the
person receiving it might be at home asleep when it arrives. Give them a
chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the mail didn't
arrive or that they don't care.
- Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture, language, and
humor have different points of reference from your own. Remember that date
formats, measurements, and idioms may not travel well. Be especially careful
with sarcasm.
- Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOU'RE SHOUTING.
- Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use underscores for
underlining. _War and Peace_ is my favorite book.
- Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly. :-) is an
example of a smiley (Look sideways). Don't assume that the inclusion of a
smiley will make the recipient happy with what you say or wipe out an
otherwise insulting comment.
- Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in messages
unless they are MIME attachments or unless your mailer encodes these. If you
send encoded messages make sure the recipient can decode them.
- Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with a
carriage return.
- Mail should have a subject heading which reflects the content of the
message.
- If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer than
4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the minute, and
the longer your message is, the more they pay.
- Just as mail (today) may not be private, mail (and news) are (today)
subject to forgery and spoofing of various degrees of detectability. Apply
common sense "reality checks" before assuming a message is valid.
- If you think the importance of a message justifies it, immediately reply
briefly to an e-mail message to let the sender know you got it, even if you
will send a longer reply later.
- "Reasonable" expectations for conduct via e-mail depend on your
relationship to a person and the context of the communication. Norms learned
in a particular e-mail environment may not apply in general to your e-mail
communication with people across the Internet. Be careful with slang or
local acronyms.
- The cost of delivering an e-mail message is, on the average, paid about
equally by the sender and the recipient (or their organizations). This is
unlike other media such as physical mail, telephone, TV, or radio. Sending
someone mail may also cost them in other specific ways like network
bandwidth, disk space or CPU usage. This is a fundamental economic reason
why unsolicited e-mail advertising is unwelcome (and is forbidden in many
contexts).
- Know how large a message you are sending. Including large files such as
Postscript files or programs may make your message so large that it cannot
be delivered or at least consumes excessive resources. A good rule of thumb
would be not to send a file larger than 50 Kilobytes. Consider file transfer
as an alternative, or cutting the file into smaller chunks and sending each
as a separate message.
- Don't send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.
- If your mail system allows you to forward mail, beware the dreaded
forwarding loop. Be sure you haven't set up forwarding on several hosts so
that a message sent to you gets into an endless loop from one computer to
the next to the next.
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