[Mailman-Users] The "right" way to reply to a mailing list

[Peter Shute]

Andrew Stuart wrote:

> Is it practical to come up with a very short list of 
> instructions for non-highly-technical end users to give them 
> so hints and confidence to get started using a list?
> 
> Thinking a clerk in the accounts department at 
> large-corporation-X has been subscribed to the list 
> annualreport at list.bigcorp.example.com
> 
> How can we support them in rapidly becoming confident enough 
> to post and use the list?

Maybe you could put some examples on a web page of what you consider to be desirable quoting practices, in the hope that new users might take up those practices and encourage older users to conform. But if they're using the same email client they use for their other day to day email, they'll most likely just do what they've always done. And it's one thing to berate users of some obsure special interest mailing list for their quoting practices, it's another thing if it's your boss.

I think the best you can usually hope for is that some of them will trim the quotes occasionally. In the end, unless the discussion gets very complicated, it usually doesn't really matter as far as people being able to understand messages is concerned. Lots of repeated quoting can make messages big though.

Peter Shute