(Originally published in Oak Leaves #60)

by Revs. Robert Lewis and Jean 'Drum' Pagano

This last year has been another great year for communication through the various ADF email lists. As the Listmaster and Webmaster, we both would like to thank everyone for doing their part to be civil and understanding.

It has not been all wonderful though. There have been a couple issues that have popped up over the last year, and we feel that it would be a good idea to remind all our members of some of the etiquette and helpful tips for our email lists. This is by no means an exhaustive list of tips, but it does hit the biggest things that we feel can all do to keep the lists civil and welcoming for everyone. If you feel we missed something, please email us at ADF-Listmaster@ADF.org or ADF-Webmaster@ADF.org.

Please also take the time to look at our privacy policy which describes what we do and don't do when you visit our website or when you join ADF. This can be found at https://www.adf.org/core/privacy.html. Please also take the time to look at our moderation policy for the email lists. This will tell you what is and isn't allowed on our lists, and how the moderation policy is applied. You can find this policy at https://www.adf.org/members/forums/lists/moderation.html.

Helpful Tips for Email Lists:

1) Read all emails before you reply.

• It is easy to want to reply to every email as you read it. If there are many emails that have been sent after that email though, you may be repeating what someone else has said. Please read all the emails that are part of a thread before you reply, this way you can avoid the "me too" type post.

2) Combine replies into one email.

• It is easy to send multiple emails, but this can easily be interpreted as bullying or spamming. People also receive emails from the list in digest form. If someone is receiving the digest, that means that they receive all the emails for the day combined into one email. The more emails you send, the harder it is for people on digest to reply and it discourages them from participating.
• Please read all the emails from one subject line and reply to all at once if possible. This may require you to copy/paste quotes from multiple emails into one, but consolidating everything into one email will be appreciated, especially if it ties multiple emails together.
• If you are replying to more than two or three emails on one subject within an hour, you are very likely over posting. Give someone else a chance to reply first.

3) Be polite and assume the best of everyone.

• Email is a very impersonal form of communication. It is extremely common to mis-interpret what is written as being an attack instead of how it was intended. The vast majority of people do not mean to insult or attack people through email. Assume that they did not mean the email in that way. When in doubt, ask them before you take it personally.
• When you are emailing, assume that your email will be taken in the worst possible way. Re-read it and see if you are joking or using sarcasm. If you are, please make sure that you are clear that you are. Examples of how to do this are using emoticons like ";)", abbreviations like "j/k" (just kidding or joking), or tags like "/sarcasm" at the end of the section.
• If you have to apologize ahead of time for offending someone, chances are you will - don't send the post.
• If you are purposely writing a mean spirited email, don't send it to the list, and be very sure you want to send it directly to the person. This is the easiest way to find yourself the subject of a complaint, put on moderation, or banned from a list.

4) Be sure of whom you are sending replies to.

• It is simple to hit reply with the intention of replying to the individual, but forgetting to change who it gets sent to. This can cause private conversations to be sent to the list. This can be extremely embarrassing, especially if you are talking about someone specific and don't want them to know what you are saying. If you are writing such an email, please change the “To” line first, and double check before you hit send. Once you hit send, you cannot get it back.

5) Update your subject line.

• Conversations often do get off the original topic and break down into multiple different conversations. This can be confusing when the topic of the email doesn't match the subject line. When you are changing the focus of an email away from the original subject, please change your subject line. There are 2 ways this is commonly done:

1. change it to "NEW SUBJECT was: OLD SUBJECT". This makes it easier to see where things came from.
2. change it to "NEW SUBJECT". This makes it difficult to track where the idea came from, but is appropriate if it not related at all to the original subject.

6) Remove the list designation from the subject line.

• All our lists add "[LISTNAME]" to the front of the subject line. When you are replying or forwarding it to a different list than it was originally sent to, please delete that tag. Keeping it there makes the subject line longer and more difficult to understand. There are also people that sort their email based on that tag and when there are multiple tags, the email either goes to the wrong folder and they won't see it or it'll end up in multiple folders.

7) Trim your posts.

• It is very easy to hit reply, add your comments to the top of the email, and send. The problem is that you are sending on a lot of information that you don't need to send. This is a big issue for people on digest mode. They have to scroll through the same emails multiple times when reading the digest. This makes it difficult to read, and results in a lot of frustration. If you receive your emails in digest format and you do this, you just sent the entire digest in addition to your reply.
• Please remove from your replies anything that is not related to your reply. Better yet, don't "top post" your replies. Instead, put the quoted material first, then reply at the bottom of the email. Just this small change can make you more conscious of the size of your email and encourage trimming.

8) Keep signatures short.

• General Guidelines for Email ListsIt is tempting to put down everything about you in your signature. We don't really need to know that information though. Signatures are best left to a maximum of three or four lines of text. The best signatures out there include only your name and email address. If you include any positions of responsibility you hold, please make sure they are pertinent to the email you are sending. It is possible that by including them in your signature that people will mistake that you are speaking from an official position when you are expressing a personal view.