Re: Replying to posts

[Tim McNamara]

> On Apr 28, 2016, at 9:37 PM, Andrew Bernard <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> The whole reason I began this thread was to ask if there may be some
> simple way we could post the code of conduct/guidelines/policy for the
> mailing list so that people could be made aware of it. Nobody has
> addressed that simple point.
> 
> The problem with implicit rules is that they are hidden. Each person
> has to discover them by themselves, taking time and effort to do so,
> and making mistakes along the way, when a simple paragraph of explicit
> rules eliminates all ambiguity.
> 
> Debian has dozens of mailing lists. They state a clear policy here:
> 
> https://www.debian.org/MailingLists
> 
> If they can do it, why can't we?
> 
> [I can't help noting that the Debian mailing lists explicitly state
> that plain text only is to be used.]
> 
>> There are many web pages about (other) mailing lists etiquette.
> 
> Indeed. We ought to have one.

Most mailing lists send a copy of the rules with the "welcome e-mail" that is 
sent someone subscribes to the list.  It's been long enough that I don't 
remember what the one I received said on the topic.  

This mailing list has a quirk that newbies should be made aware of, which is 
that (unlike any other mailing list to which I belong) the Reply-To: header is 
not set to the list.

The plain text standard should be made explicit with either directions for how 
to do that or links to directions about how to do that for the most common mail 
applications (Outlook, Google Mac, the Mac Mail.app and iOS mail app, etc.).

And I also apologize to the list members that my public and private appeals for 
pragmatism in dealing with the mail format issue seem to have strongly 
contributed to David Kastrup's exit from the user list.  That was not my intent.