1. EmailRant

Being on a list of supposedly clued people who still can't manage to do email properly is... frustrating. This is a list of common mistakes.

1.1. Threading

• Starting new threads by following up to completely unrelated messages
• Not threading messages
• Not threading messages and not attributing the message you follow up to.

1.2. Quoting

• Top posting - ARGH GRRR *gnash* *gnash*
• Quoting too much and then just adding one line (for bonus points top posting this as well)
• Quoting too little
• Quoting a message and then assuming the rest of the world has MS Okey Kokey 2000 extensions and won't just see it as the original message intermingled with the new text.
• Writing all of your mail on one line
• Not reformatting below 80 characters per line.

• Attempting to reformat but getting it oh so wrong that the resulting mess of > and spacing confuses anyone who tries to read it.

1.3. Broken clients

• Claiming your message is encoded in US ASCII when in fact it is iso-8859-1/utf-8/whatever
• Using Notes

1.4. Idiot settings

• Not having your real name in your headers. Especially when contacting people on business matters, though it's crap on lists too.
• Not using a subject line.

1.5. Mailing lists

• Sending your subscribe messages to the list
• Sending your unsubscribe messages to the list
• Sending your unsubscribe messages to the list when there's a footer on every message explaining how to unsubscribe
• Not paying attention to Mail-Followup-To headers. Repeatedly. Even when you're told about them.
• Sending mails that are cc'd to a list you run, that only allows posting to subscribers. Which then means that when I reply I get a bunch of crap from your list software.
• Replying to posts to the list with bounces to the From header, TMDA style whitelist requests, mails from ticketting systems or any other sort of automated crap.
• Using f***ing broken vacation clients that respond to posters to a mailing list.

I'm sure there's more...

CategoryRant