List Members FAQ

Why is Yahoogroups rejecting my HTML messages?

Q: I am a member of a group at Yahoo and I tried to post a message and Yahoo rejected it, said I couldn't post HTML messages but I didn't, what's going on?

A: A couple things are happening, first the group is set to strip attachments, second you posted a message either in rich text format (RTF) or HTML and it didn't include a plain text part. This happens alot with Hotmail users because Hotmail doesn't follow Internet protocols while most email programs and webmail providers do follow proper protocols.

When you send a message in true plain text, there's only one part to it, the plain text of your message. But when you send a message in rich text or HTML, most email programs or webmail interfaces send the message in two parts, one plain text part and one rich text/HTML part. On lists that strip attachments, Yahoo sees the rich text/HTML part as an attachment and removes it. If your email program or webmail interface didn't send a plain text part, then there's nothing left to post to the list once the rich text/HTML is removed.

To prevent Yahoo from rejecting your messages to groups, check the options for your email program or webmail interface and set it to send in plain text only. For more specific instructions on all kinds of email programs, check out the How to Post in Plain Text website.

I have this really cool picture, should I sent it to the list?

While some lists happily send dozens or even hundreds of pictures back and forth each day, some lists vigorously prohibit attachments of any kind, pictures, documents, files or programs. So carefully read the list rules (look for that list welcome message!) or ask the listowner before sending any kind of attachment to the list. If the list is hosted at Yahoogroups or Smartgroups, their website has an area designated for the list to store files or pictures and then you can post an announcement on the list about the file or picture, giving some info so that other members know what to expect before taking the time to connect to the net, log in and go to the files or photos area. For lists on other services that don't have a files or photo area, you can upload your file or photo to a free webhost like Geocities or Tripod and then post the website address (url) to the list and don't forget to give some info about the file or picture.

Should I quote the entire email or digest I'm replying to?

(aka Why it's okay to run with scissors on an email list)

Always remember that everyone else on the list has already gotten the original email that you're replying to, so it's never necessary to quote the entire email and absolutely unnecessary under any circumstances to quote an entire digest! Beyond simple common courtesy, some countries (like large parts of Europe) still charge for local phone service by the minute so every unneeded word in your email costs them money to download. Also, quoting extra unnecessary text can result in your words getting lost, losing their impact as people struggle to find what you're saying. If you quote the entire original email and put your reply at the bottom, people who are sight-impaired and using text readers to hear your email will have to listen to the original email all over again before getting to your comments and may simply give up and skip your email (and any future emails from you) entirely.

So, in order to communicate effectively, to entice people to read your gems of wisdom :), snip, snip, snip and snip some more! Delete any extraneous header info that your mail program may have quoted, leave the sender's name so people know who you're talking to, then delete unneeded text, whittle it down to the pertinent points you're responding to. Remember that people have already read the original email, so you only need enough text to jog their memory about what you're replying to. If you're responding to a single point in an email, it is acceptable to put your reply at the top of the email with the original email below BUT don't forget to snip anyway, leave just the original pertinent text and the sender's name or email address.

If your reply is complex, responding to three or four or more points or questions in the original email, then it's better if you intersperse your replies with the quoted text, like this:

Mary, Helen or Pat said:
> blah-dee blah-dee, blah-dee dee-dee and more
> blah-dee blah-dee, blah-dee dee-dee

I think blah blah blah and blah blah blah.

> oogly boogly blah dee blah dee blah blah
> and still more oogly boogly blah blah

And my response to this is blee blee blah blah

(signed) Any Tom, Dick or Harry

Using that method, it reads like a conversation, one person says something, then another replies, then the first person says something else and the second replies again. If you lurk for a bit after joining a list, you'll get a feel for how replies are handled and can then follow that example. But even if everyone else replies on top and quotes the entire original email below, PLEASE snip unnecessary text! It's a good habit to develop and will come in handy on other lists, plus it reduces bandwidth on the net, it's the virtual version of recycling newspapers and soda pop cans.

Guides to Writing Email

Even tho it's a bit long, this is a very good guide for anyone new to email or to mailing lists, A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email. You can skip to the parts you're interested in with the menu on the left.

And this one is good too, Mailing and Posting Etiquette, it's shorter but it covers the important points, there's also some links at the end to other sites.

What's with all that weird spelling, bad grammar, strange abbreviations and other stuff?

Like I talked about typing in all caps, there's lots of ways to demonstrate emotion in email, using *'s around words for emphasis, using smiley faces and other emoticons, using acronyms like LOL for Laughing Out Loud and more. People may also use slang, both real life slang and computer slang like using "4" instead of "for" or "u" instead of "you". On some lists, this type of thing is common, on others, it's not, just depends on the general list atmosphere and any rules the listowner makes about it. For a listing of the basic acronyms and emoticons, check out Dr. Internut's Internet Resource Clinic pages about acronyms and emoticons.

More sites for figuring out acronyms:
Acronyms and their meanings
Acronym Server Simplified
Acronym Finder

As for bad grammar and spelling errors, it's important to remember that every user on the internet isn't a secretary! :) Many people don't know how to type by touch and the keyboard layout isn't always easy for beginners. And remember that you're dealing with a wide spectrum of people on the net, with varying backgrounds and educations and in various countries where English may not be their first language and some people are not as comfortable with the written word as others. Enjoy the diversity and the chance to reach to across borders and around the world and experience different cultures, look for what people mean to say, rather than how they phrased it or spelled it. If you're still confused, ask politely, explain that you're just not clear on what they meant and that you want to understand, if they wouldn't mind giving more detail or talking more about their theory. Keep in mind that we all communicate in different ways and that is the beauty of life! :)

(Thanks to Gloria for the additional acronym links.)

What's a sig line? How long should it be?

(aka Can I include every great quote or website I've ever heard or visited? How about all this nifty ASCII artwork I made?)

A sig line is what you put after your name, it can be any number of things, your email address, your personal or business website, personal or company information, a quote you really like, your philosophy of life, a website you really like, ASCII art (making images out of text, similar to emoticons, for more info, check out Google's ASCII Art category) or just about anything else you want to put there. With HTML email, you can also include images or insert things like the current weather report for your locale. Commonly used email programs (Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) and other mail providers (Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) usually give you some method of automatically inserting your sig line before sending out your email.

As you can imagine, people can get carried away sig lines, I've personally seen sig lines that are more than 40 lines long! That can be very frustrating when the actual content of the email is very small, a few lines or even just a "me too!" comment. So, as with snipping text when replying, be kind to your fellow list members and the internet, keep it succinct and to the point. The general recommendation is no more than five lines up to 70 characters each. Also check the list rules because many lists have rules about sig lines, either limiting them in length or restricting what type of content you can have or disallowing them altogether.

And last but not least, flames, trolls and other list monsters...

Flames are derogatory or implied derogatory responses to any given post. Most listowners prefer that people post in a mature manner and may enforce strict rules about flaming. If you really can't restrain yourself from telling someone they're an idiot, it's best to do it off the list, in a private email, rather than on the list.

And bear in mind that the person you think is an idiot may actually be a troll. Trolls are people who spend their time trolling lists (like trolling for fish), ready to incite flames and stir up trouble just because they can. If you respond on list or even in private, you're simply satisfying the troll, giving him or her what they want. Some trolls even aim to destroy a list by causing so much trouble that the members who post regularly simply give up and leave and the group dies. There's a newsgroup for these people (and no doubt lists, too) where they plan these attacks and then boast gleefully when they successfully destroy a group. So don't feed the trolls!

Then there's spammers, people who join a list only to sell something or promote their website that sells something. Most lists have strict rules about spam and generally strive to keep spammers off their lists and remove and ban them if they do manage to join. Most of the schemes that spammers promote either in email or on a website are fraud, they work by getting you to buy some kit or package which promises to help you get rich but all it does is give the spammer your money instead. Robert Heinlein said it best, TANSTAAFL, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch! So don't be taken by these con men and don't pass on their trash to anyone else.

And then there's the ordinary, garden variety psycho which can turn up on a list in many different guises and cause all sorts of ruckus. The seeming anonymity of the internet can bring out the best and the worst in people. So exercise caution and common sense, don't give out personal details, name, address, phone number, etc. even if you really think you know someone, it's very easy to be fooled on the net.

How to post without flaming or upsetting others

Avoiding personal conflict on mailing lists is a great article about what starts flame wars and how to post without touching one off.

Those nasty Internet monsters

For info and tips about viruses and virus hoaxes, check out the Virus Topic in the Listowners' FAQ:

Viruses, Worms and More...

Is that rumor true? Should I really forward that email to everyone I know?

Check rumors, urban legends, those sob stories about kids dying of cancer, that $1,000 that Bill Gates is giving away at the Hoaxes topic in the Listowners FAQ:

Hoaxes and Urban Legends

I'm using WebTV, I can't quote anything!

If you're using WebTV to post and reply to list messages, here's a helpful site with info for WebTV users:

For WebTv Users: Replying and quoting politely on a computer mailing list or in Usenet

It covers posting in plain text, why you might want to disable any fancy signatures, how to cut and paste and more.

!0000 Tip - Trick or Treat?

Q: Someone told me this nifty trick for stopping viruses, you just create an entry in your address book with !0000 for the name and since it's not valid, the virus won't be able to send itself out! Isn't that cool???

A: Well, not really. Sad to say, that's a hoax. I wish it was that simple to stop viruses but virtually all current viruses use their own little mail program to send themselves out, not your mail program. Yes, they do grab email addresses from your address book but they'll simple ignore the ones that don't have valid email addresses and go on to the next address. Here's an article from About.com about this trick that's not a treat:

!0000 Trick - Trick or Treat?

What is bouncing? (aka Help! I stopped receiving list mail!)

Q. What the heck is bouncing?

A. It's the email equivalent of a telephone busy signal (soft bounce) or a "this number has been disconnected" message (hard bounce) for a telephone number.

Soft bounces (busy signal) happen when your email box fills up and new mail gets returned with a "mailbox full" message.

Hard bounces (number disconnected) happen when you cancel your email address or change ISPs. Messages to the old email address will get returned with a "user unknown" type of message. Also, some free email services like Yahoo and Hotmail will deactivate an email address if you haven't logged in to their service within some time period and then you'll see "account deactivated" type of messages, these are also hard bounces.

When these bounces are received by the list interface, Yahoogroups, Smartgroups, Topica, Mailman, etc., the list interface may set you to bouncing status and stop sending you list mail.

At Yahoogroups, you can check your bounce history by going to your MyGroups page and clicking on Email Preferences, then clicking on Bounce History for your email address. If you're in bouncing status, you can also send yourself a Reactivation Request from that page to get restored to normal status again.

If the list is hosted elsewhere, check with the listowner to see how you can start getting list mail again, it works differently at each list service.

Don't use Internet Explorer!

I don't normally make blanket statements like that, I'd rather have a choice and I like to let other people make their own choices too. But it just keeps getting worse and worse with IE, more and more criminals (hackers, phishers, spammers) keep finding more new ways to exploit all the problems in IE and it will only continue to get worse, not better.

What's prompted my urge to everyone to switch is the latest and most dangerous exploit - read this article at CNet.

Any site hosted on a server using Windows (2000, 2003, NT, etc.) can get infected. Sites hosted on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and other types of server O/S can't get infected.

There are a good chunk of large and reputable sites running on Windows servers. As the CNet articles notes, even bank sites are getting infected and then the site can infect their customers - even going to an https url is not safe, the virus can infect the user from a secure https url.

The big lesson here for users is: Don't use IE - except for going to the Windows Update website (and if you're on Windows XP, you don't even have to do that, the XP update feature will do it automatically and without going thru IE). For all browsing, other than the Windows Update site, here's safe alternatives that cannot be infected by this virus or other malicious adware, spyware or any other nasties that automatically install thru IE.

Links open in new windows - all of these browsers are free of charge and advertising except for Opera.

Firefox (recommended for IE users)
Mozilla (recommended for Netscape users)
Opera (for Windows or Mac users, also note that this browser is not free, you can either pay in cash or pay thru having ads displayed at the top of the browser)
Camino (for Mac OS X users)
Safari (for Mac OS X users)

(While Mac users aren't affected by this virus, the IE version for Mac is not a great browser, imho, so I'm including alternatives for Mac users as well.)