Mailing list posting guidelines

Mailing list posting guidelines

[Brad Bishop]

It was pointed out to me that the Redfish thread was hard to follow along
(as in, hard to read).

I just wanted to highlight that there are mailing list posting guidelines
designed to combat this.  Here’s a good overview - pay particular attention
to the sections on plain text, top posting, and quoting:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines#Proper_posting_style

thanks!

-brad

Re: Mailing list posting guidelines

[Joel Stanley]

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 1:14 AM, Brad Bishop <bradleyb@fuzziesquirrel.com> wrote:
> It was pointed out to me that the Redfish thread was hard to follow along
> (as in, hard to read).
>
> I just wanted to highlight that there are mailing list posting guidelines
> designed to combat this.  Here’s a good overview - pay particular attention
> to the sections on plain text, top posting, and quoting:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines#Proper_posting_style

Thanks Brad. In addition, OpenStack has some good quality detailed
documentation that I would recommend:

 https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/MailingListEtiquette

Cheers,

Joel

Re: Mailing list posting guidelines

[Patrick Venture]

On Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 6:02 PM, Joel Stanley <joel@jms.id.au> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 1:14 AM, Brad Bishop <bradleyb@fuzziesquirrel.com> wrote:
>> It was pointed out to me that the Redfish thread was hard to follow along
>> (as in, hard to read).
>>
>> I just wanted to highlight that there are mailing list posting guidelines
>> designed to combat this.  Here’s a good overview - pay particular attention
>> to the sections on plain text, top posting, and quoting:
>>
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines#Proper_posting_style
>
> Thanks Brad. In addition, OpenStack has some good quality detailed
> documentation that I would recommend:
>
>  https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/MailingListEtiquette

Hilarious examples.  Blue sucks! :D But helpful.

>
> Cheers,
>
> Joel

Thanks

RE: Mailing list posting guidelines

[Michael.E.Brown]

This is all really nice, but, to quote the openstack guidelines:

Outlook
Don't use it!

Some of us are forced to use outlook through no fault of our own, and have no access to gmail/etc while at work to do alternative clients.

The posting guidelines are a very large barrier to entry and huge source of stress to people wanting to participate (speaking on my behalf but also on behalf of several others who have approached me about this). As a strong open source advocate, this really bothers me to say, but people need to get over themselves about this. Yes, it's much easier to follow if you have a sane email client that can bottom post, but many of us don't have that option, and the thought of setting up alternative clients for everybody wanting to participate is... unworkable.

My setup for posting to the mailing list is beyond ludicrous (Involving two separate SSH tunnels to different machines and Mutt), and I'm not willing to force that on everybody here. Also, because I don't always have access to that machine, it means I cannot respond to anything for large parts of the day.

Is there a productive solution to this insoluble problem?
--
Michael

Top posted on purpose.

-----Original Message-----
From: openbmc [mailto:openbmc-bounces+michael.e.brown=dell.com@lists.ozlabs.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Venture
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 12:16 PM
To: Joel Stanley <joel@jms.id.au>
Cc: rolfb@us.ibm.com; Tanous, Ed <ed.tanous@intel.com>; jwcarman@us.ibm.com; Yugi Mani <yupalani@microsoft.com>; Vancil, Paul <Paul_Vancil@Dell.com>; pradeep.kumar36@tcs.com; alirhas@microsoft.com; Brad Bishop <bradleyb@fuzziesquirrel.com>; OpenBMC Maillist <openbmc@lists.ozlabs.org>; Rao, Balaji B <Balaji_B_Rao@dell.com>
Subject: Re: Mailing list posting guidelines

On Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 6:02 PM, Joel Stanley <joel@jms.id.au> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 1:14 AM, Brad Bishop <bradleyb@fuzziesquirrel.com> wrote:
>> It was pointed out to me that the Redfish thread was hard to follow 
>> along (as in, hard to read).
>>
>> I just wanted to highlight that there are mailing list posting 
>> guidelines designed to combat this.  Here’s a good overview - pay 
>> particular attention to the sections on plain text, top posting, and quoting:
>>
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines#Proper_posting
>> _style
>
> Thanks Brad. In addition, OpenStack has some good quality detailed 
> documentation that I would recommend:
>
>  https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/MailingListEtiquette

Hilarious examples.  Blue sucks! :D But helpful.

>
> Cheers,
>
> Joel

Thanks

Re: Mailing list posting guidelines

[Brad Bishop]

> On Feb 8, 2018, at 5:12 PM, <Michael.E.Brown@dell.com> <Michael.E.Brown@dell.com> wrote:
> 
> The posting guidelines are a very large barrier to entry

Ok.  Respectfully disagree.  Even with Outlook, it shouldn’t be
too hard for folks to reply without history, copy/paste a line
of context they want to reply to and drop a greater than in front
of it.

In fact I’ve already seen a couple emails from people where they
were not aware of typical email list guidelines in their first posts
and are now composing mails in the usual way quite nicely.

> and huge source of stress to people wanting to participate

I can understand this.  I went through it myself about 18 months
ago.  But after working in various open communities I now understand
the value of it, and would like to help others see that value too.

> Is there a productive solution to this insoluble problem?

The reality is, if these guidelines aren’t followed people will
simply ignore the email.  I brought up typical email list guidelines
because I didn’t want to see that happening.

-brad