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21 <p>This document is based on years of experience with the Subversion
22 mailing lists, and specifically addresses the problems seen most
25 href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22mailing+list+etiquette%22&btnG=Google+Search"
28 <p>If you follow these conventions when posting to the
29 users@subversion.tigris.org or dev@subversion.tigris.org mailing
30 lists, your post is much more likely to be read and answered.</p>
38 Subversion, or if you think you've found a bug (developers read the
39 users list too, so they'll see your bug report). If you want to
47 get an answer on users@. The two lists have different charters:
48 users@ is a support forum, dev@ is a development discussion list.
49 When a support question goes unanswered on users@, that is
50 unfortunate, but it does not necessarily make the question on-topic
51 for dev@. (Of course, if the mail is about a possible bug in
52 Subversion, and got no reaction on users@, then asking on dev@ is
58 <p>Please report bugs on the users@ list first, to get confirmation
60 a full report. You should allocate some time for this: writing a
61 useful bug report generally takes at least fifteen minutes, and
62 sometimes a half-hour or even more if the reproduction recipe is
64 for instructions on how to write a good bug report.</p>
67 useless bug reports, just saying "It didn't work" without providing
68 any details (such as what version of Subversion was being used on both
69 the client and server sides, what behavior the user expected,
70 transcripts of the exact command and the exact output, etc). If you
75 </div>
77 </div>
82 <p>Sometimes, when really impassioned about a topic, it's tempting to
83 respond to every message in a mail thread. Please don't do this. Our
84 mailing lists are already high-traffic, and following up to every
85 message only adds to the noise.</p>
87 <p>Instead, read the entire mail thread, think carefully about what
88 you have to say, pick a single message to reply to, and then lay out
89 your thoughts. Occasionally it might make sense to reply to two
90 separate messages in a thread, but only if the topics have started to
91 diverge.</p>
97 <p>There are many sources of information about Subversion on the
98 Internet. While the list below isn't complete, most questions asked
99 on users@ can be answered by pointing the asker to one of these:</p>
101 <ul>
106 online).</li>
108 <li>The
112 <li>The
125 </ul>
127 </div>
129 </div>
140 columns, you leave room for quoting characters to be added in future
141 replies without forcing a rewrapping of the text. The 72-column limit
142 only applies to the prose part of your message, of course. If you're
146 <p>Some mailers do a kind of automatic line-wrapping, whereby when
147 you're writing your mail, the display shows line breaks that aren't
148 actually there. When the mail reaches the list, it won't have the
149 line breaks you thought it had. If your mail editor does this, look
150 for a setting you can tweak to make it show true line breaks.</p>
152 </div>
157 <p>Capitalize the first letter of each sentence, and use paragraphs.
158 If you're showing screen output or some other sort of example, offset
159 it so it's clearly separate from the prose. If you don't do these
161 and many people will not bother to read it at all.</p>
163 </div>
165 </div>
175 "Group reply" feature when responding to a list post. Otherwise, your
176 mail will only go to the author of the original post, not to the whole
177 list. Unless there's a reason to reply privately, it's always better
178 to respond to the list, so everyone can watch and learn. (Also, many
179 people who frequently get private responses to their posts have
180 indicated that they would prefer those responses to go to the list
181 instead.)</p>
183 <p>Note that the Subversion mailing lists do not modify the
186 the reasons listed in <a
190 sections. From time to time, someone posts asking why we don't set
195 The list administrators are aware of both documents, and see that both
196 sides of the argument have merits, but in the end have chosen not to
198 topic.</p>
200 </div>
205 <p>Don't start a new thread (subject) by replying to an existing
206 post. Instead, start a fresh mail, even if that means you have to
207 write out the list address by
208 hand. If you reply to an existing post, your mailreader may include
209 metadata that marks your post as a followup in that thread. Changing
211 mailreaders will still preserve enough metadata to put your post in
212 the wrong thread. If this happens, not only will some people not see
213 your post (because they're ignoring that thread), but people who are
214 reading the thread will waste their time with your off-topic post.
215 The safest way to avoid this is to never use "reply" to start a new
216 topic.</p>
218 <p>(The root of the problem is really that some mail interfaces do
219 not indicate that the message generated by the "Reply" function is
220 different from a fresh message. If you use such a program, consider
221 submitting an enhancement request or a patch to its developers to make
222 it show a distinction.)</p>
224 </div>
230 preserving the thread (perhaps because the thread has wandered into
231 some other topic), do it by making a post under the new subject with
232 the old subject in parenthesis, like this:</p>
234 <pre>
235 Blue asparagus
236 |
237 |_ Re: Blue asparagus
238 |
240 |
241 |_ Re: Yellow elephants
242 </pre>
244 </div>
249 <p>Please don't reflexively chide people for top-posting.
250 "Top-posting" is the practice of putting the response text above the
251 quoted text, instead of interleaved with it or below it. Usually, the
252 quoted text provides essential context for understanding the response,
253 and so top-posting is a hindrance. Sometimes, people top-post when it
254 would have been better to inter-post or bottom-post, and others chide
255 them for this. If you must chide, do it gently, and certainly don't
256 bother to make an extra post just to point out a minor problem like
257 this. There are even situations where top-posting is
258 preferable — for example, when the response is short
259 and general, and applies to the entirety of a long passage of quoted
260 text. So top-posting is always a judgement call, and in any case it's
261 not a major inconvenience even when done inappropriately.</p>
263 <p>If you came here looking for advice on how to quote, instead of
264 advice on how to not flame people for their bad quoting habits, see <a
269 </div>
271 </div>
277 <p>See
279 patch. Note that you can send in a patch to modify these web pages as
280 well as to modify code; the web pages' repository URL is
284 </div>
291 mails, RichText mails, or other formats that might be opaque to
292 text-only mailreaders. Regarding language: we don't have an
293 English-only policy, but you will probably get the best results by
294 posting in English — it is the language shared by the
296 describe the exact headers we expect, but if we wanted to, it would be
297 something like:
299 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
300 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15
302 and
304 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
305 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
306 -->
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