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.

I'm sure there's more...

CategoryRant