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Tips for Writing Public Email

We use the mail list both as a media to transmit our thoughts and as a virtual location to hang around and feel part of something. In order for the second to happen, you just have to subscribe. That's it, nothing fancy. But in order for the first to happen (transmit your thoughts) it's an entirely different matter.

Here are a few things that help a lot:

• reduce noise, increase signal: your email client will quote the message you are replying to automatically, but it's your responsibility to remove those parts that aren't part of the signal of your email. Sure, you might let this operation to the reader, but you must understand that the reader is not supposed to do this. Or, at least, it should be you to make the reader comfortable.
• be respectful, be aware of community dynamics: sending HTML in the mail more than doubles the message size and interferes with text-based mail clients. You want your point to come across, so make sure that everybody can get to that point with the easiest possible effort, or, otherwise, your signal might be wasted in the noise and the time you think you are saving, you are, in fact, loosing it completely.
• promote your signal: people on mail lists are used to read tons of email a day. Without a good 'promotion' of your points, they might get missed in the noise. (note: 'noise' is a subjective notion, what is signal for you might be noise for others, it's up to you to make your signal stand up). Things that help in this respect:
  • a simple yet effective email title: humans are ultimately curious animals, tickle their curiosity!
  • be elegant and visually effective: sure, you have to use ASCII, but there is a lot that you can convey with ASCII

    +---------------------------------+
        | I'm sure nobody will miss this! |
        +---------------------------------+
    

  • structure your text: whenever possible, use *strong* or _underline_ or /italic/ or use bullet lists and so on. Consider a textual IETF RFC, that's how you should write your emails. Sure, it takes a little more time, but I guarantee you that it saves a lot of it later on.
  • keep paragraphs short! you can go on and on forever, I'm sure you can, but keep your point focused, so that the signal/noise ratio is increased.
• be respectful of other's opinion: your email is likely to be stored for a very long time, archived in several locations around the world, indexed by Google, locked in magnetic tapes into the NSA caves and so on. Just keep this in mind before you hit "send", this will keep you honest.
• admit your incapacity/ignorance/mistakes: there is nothing more appreciated in a community that someone that can stand up and apologize for something. Remember: if you don't make mistakes, you can't learn. And if you don't admit you made it, nobody knows you are learning.

Keep all these things in mind and you'll be impressed by how much fun and knowledge you can get out of all this open development thing.

Note: These tips are are the same helpful care and feeding suggestions defined in project Simile.