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...