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Add headings; mention OE Quotefix

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[SVN r30138]
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Dave Abrahams 2005-07-16 19:44:58 +00:00
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discussion_policy.htm
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@ -59,8 +59,24 @@ will let you know.</p>
newsgroup instead.</li>
<li>Job offers.</li>
<li>Requests for solutions to homework assignments.</ul>
<h2><a name="effective"></a>Effective Posting</h2>
<p>Most Boost mailing lists host a great deal of traffic, so your post
is usually competing for attention with many other communications.
This section describes how to make sure it has the desired impact.
<h3>Well-Crafted Posting is Worth the Effort</h3>
<p>Don't forget, you're a single writer but there are many readers,
and you want them to stay interested in what you're saying. Saving
your readers a little time and effort is usually worth the extra time
you spend when writing a message. Also, boost discussions are saved
for posterity, as rationales and history of the work we do. A post's
usefulness in the future is determined by its readability.
<h3>Put the Library Name in the Subject Line</h3>
<p>When your post is related to a particular Boost library, it's
helpful to put the library name in square brackets at the beginning of
the subject line, e.g.
@ -74,6 +90,8 @@ maintainers don't have time to read every message. A tag on the
subject line will help ensure the right people see your post.
<p><a name="quoting"></a>
<h3>Don't Overquote</h3>
Please <b>prune extraneous quoted text</b> from replies so that
only the relevant parts are included. Some people have to pay for, or
wait for, each byte that they download from the list. More
@ -81,6 +99,7 @@ importantly, it will save time and make your post more valuable when
readers do not have to find out which exact part of a previous message
you are responding to.
<h3>Use a Readable Quotation Style</h3>
<p>A common and very useful approach is to cite the small fractions of
the message you are actually responding to and to put your response
directly beneath each citation, with a blank line separating them for
@ -89,6 +108,8 @@ readability:
<blockquote>
<pre>
<i>Person-you're-replying-to</i> wrote:
&gt; Some part of a paragraph that you wish to reply to goes
&gt; here; there may be several lines.
@ -108,6 +129,30 @@ For more information about effective use of quotation in posts, see <a
href="http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html">this helpful
guide</a>.
<h3>Keep the Formatting of Quotations Consistent</h3>
<p>
Some email and news clients use poor word wrapping algorithms that
leave successive lines from the same quotation with differing numbers
of leading &quot;<tt>&gt;</tt>&quot; characters. <b>Microsoft
Outlook</b> and <b>Outlook Express</b>, and some web clients, are
especially bad about this. If your client offends in this way, please
take the effort to clean up the mess it makes in quoted text you
include. Remember, even if you didn't write the original text,
it's <i>your</i> posting; its readability determines whether you get
your point across.
<p>
The Microsoft clients also create an unusually verbose header at the
beginning of the original message text and leave the cursor at the
beginning of the message, which encourages users to write their
replies before all of the quoted text rather than putting the reply in
context. Outlook Express users can fix all of these problems
automatically by installing
<a href="http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/">OE
QuoteFix</a>. Unfortunately there's no similar utility for Outlook
Users; they will have to clean up their posts manually.
<h3>Summarizing and Referring to Earlier Messages</h3>
<p>A summary of the foregoing thread is only needed after a long
discussion, especially when the topic is drifting or a result has been
achieved in a discussion. The mail system will do the tracking that
@ -122,18 +167,7 @@ href="http://www.tinyurl.com">tinyurl.com</a>. Citing the relevant
portion of a message you link to is often helpful (if the citation is
small).
<p>Don't forget, you're a single writer but there are many readers,
and you want them to stay interested in what you're saying. Saving
your readers a little time and effort is usually worth the extra time
you spend when writing a message. Also, boost discussions are saved
for posterity, as rationales and history of the work we do. A post's
usefulness in the future is determined by its readability.
<p>The mailing list software automatically limits message and
attachment size to a reasonable amount, typically 75K, which is
adjusted from time-to-time by the moderators.. This limit is a
courtesy to those who rely on dial-up Internet access.
</p>
<h3>Maintain the Integrity of Discussion Threads</h3>
<p><b>When starting a new topic, always send a fresh message</b>,
rather than beginning a reply to some other message and replacing the
@ -145,12 +179,25 @@ relevant messages will decide they're done with a topic and hide or
kill the entire thread: your message will be missed, and you won't get
the response you're looking for.
<p>By the same token, <b>When replying to an existing message, use
your mailer's &quot;Reply&quot; function</b>, so that the reply shows
up as part of the same discussion thread.
<p><b>Do not reply to digests</b> if you are a digest delivery
subscriber. Your reply will not be properly threaded and will
probably have the wrong subject line. Instead, you can reply through
the <a href="http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel">GMane
web interface</a>.
<h3>Keep The Size of Your Posting Manageable</h3>
<p>The mailing list software automatically limits message and
attachment size to a reasonable amount, typically 75K, which is
adjusted from time-to-time by the moderators. This limit is a
courtesy to those who rely on dial-up Internet access.
</p>
<h2><a name="behavior"></a>Prohibited Behavior</h2>
<p>Prohibited behavior will not be tolerated. The moderators will ban
postings by abusers.</p>