Matthias Kirschner wrote:
- *E-Mail signature* Keep it small and simple. Signatures longer than five lines should be avoided.
IIRC in the good old days the standard was maximum 4 lines (5 lines with the "-- " sig separator).
- *Mailinglists* Use list-reply. It is not necessary to include the sender in To: or Cc: if he is subscribed. If the e-mail programs are configured correct the sender will be Cc’ed if he is not subscribed or wishes to be Cc’ed.
Hmm. This is certainly debatable. On GNU and GNOME mailing lists (and I dare to say, on *most* free software lists) the default policy is to always to CC people who participated in the thread.
This is fairly logical:
Scenario 1)
I am a user who discovered a bug in GNU Foo, and post to bug-foo@gnu.org. I should not be required to subscribe, and I should not be required to dig eventual followups via inconvenient interfaces like Mailman's archives, or -- heaven forbid -- something like the various/nefarious mail archiving sites like nabble.com. I should get the response right away.
Scenario 2)
I'm a regular lurker on the bug-foo list, thus I'm subscribed. A user reports a bug/misfeature, or is confused about something in the `foo' package, so I reply to him. It is not feasible to check whether the user is subscribed, even if I happen to be the list admin. I just CC her, to be on the safe side and save her extra trouble.
Scenario 3)
I happen to develop gnome-foo and need to announce a string change to gnome-i18n during a string freeze. I'm not a translator myself, and I'm not subscribed to that list. I post the announcement, but a translator then asks a question about the new (cryptic) string, which I don't receive.
Scenario 4)
I'm subscribed to many lists, but I don't read regularly all of them. However, if I participate in a discussion on some of those "low interest" lists, I appreciate if a person who posts to the thread CCs me. I know this is not very usual situation, but the more mail I'm processing as years go by, the more I appreciate it.
Scenario N)
There are plenty. Really.
From all the lists I'm subscribed to (much more than 200, actually), TTBOMK only Debian has a strict no-CC policy. I comply, of course, although I notice that many DDs don't bother. (The extra mental excercise to determine where you're posting to is also slightly annoying.) In general, it seems to me that a no-CC policy is very inter-community friendly (you sort your mail easily, and you rely people to CC you when you ask), but basically user-unfriendly -- it is very presumptuous to rely that the OP is going to search and watch for your-almighty-followup just because you happen to have an odd list policy.
More generally speaking, mailing lists are a gross hack to replace Usenet newsgroups, just because the new kids on the block seem to find NNTP archaic and weird (partly because most "modern" user-agents have from moderate to poor NNTP support). Thus the always-CC vs. no-CC debate. YMMV.