Netiquette
This is an updated version of the email etiquette guide with more general and comprehensive netiquette resources.
In the early days of the Internet, netiquette was much more universal. These days, particularly for people who weren't around in the pre-web Internet area (before the mid-1990s), netiquette is something that must be learned, both by observation and even explicitly. We now live in a sort of eternal september where most people that are online don't know how to communicate "correctly". This page provides some tips and resources.
Several classic netiquette guides have been created over the years, and a worth a look if you haven't seen them before. The first two in particular are must reads. The first resource from ESR is more focused on etiquette for asking questions or asking for help, while the others are more on technical netiquette.
- How To Ask Questions The Smart Way — Eric Steven Raymond
- Usenet Posting Tips (page offline; archived here)
- USENET and Mailing List posting netiquette
- Usenet Netiquette
There is a larger aspect to netiquette which also has to do with the preference for open and standardized protocols, such as email, netnews (Usenet), IRC, etc.
Email and netnews (Usenet) etiquette
- Use a proper mail client — Although webmail clients are an easy way to access email from almost anywhere, webmail clients remain quite primitive and lacking in important email features and tools. Avoid them at all possible costs. Proper email etiquette is not possible unless you use a good mail client. We personally recommend MailNews, a forked fork of Thunderbird. Although Outlook is the business standard and quite popular, it is infamously non standards-compliant. Using a standards-compliant and feature-rich mail client will make your life and others' lives much easier. Use a variant of Thunderbird if possible, rather than Outlook, and avoid webmail (and even worse, mail "apps") at all possible costs. Although the approach is less unified and somewhat more cumbersome, it works best if you use a Thunderbird-derivative for mail and Outlook for everything else (calendaring, address book management, task management, etc.) so you can still take advantage of Microsoft Exchange.
- Reply inline — This is probably one of the most important tips. Replying inline does wonders for the clarity and coherence of your responses. Inline replies are essential for long exchanges, particularly between multiple people, like on a group or listserv. Although "top-posting" is the default in Outlook and most webmail providers (just one example why webmail is to be avoided), it should be avoided at all possible costs. This concise example illustrates:
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. >> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
This confusion is just one of many that inline replies avoid. You can read more about top-posting and inline replies, if you wish.
Long story short, inline replies preserve logical ordering and sequencing in email exchanges, allow you to respond point-by-point, thus retaining full context and allowing you to avoid having to summarize the question in order to reintroduce context arbitrarily (as is necessary when one top-posts), and makes it very easy to follow complex exchanges even as they nest several levels deep.
Two footnotes: when replying inline, leave a line break before and after each inline response. This makes your responses even easier to distinguish from the quoted message. Secondly, it is good practice to judiciously trim quotes. If a large part of the reply is no longer relevant to the discussion at present, trim irrelevant material. You should always trim others' signatures when replying (and conclude with your own). If you do not trim all the quotes, you should type a signature (your name or initials will do) to signal that there are no further replies from you in that email in the remaining quoted material. - Sign your email — You don't need to have an email signature configured in your mail client. However, you should always conclude your email by adding your name or initials either at the end of your email or after the last response in your reply.
- Send in plain text when possible — Unless you have a legitimate (really good) reason for sending as HTML, you should send your messages as plain text. Most clients default to HTML, so you should change this. The mail guide linked in Step 1 describes how to automatically prompt you to choose between sending in plain text and HTML, for maximal power. (HTML is only necessary if you intend to format text or use inline images, generally; Thunderbird and its derivatives, however, can send/receive plain text messages with bold/italics/underline text, using the *BOLD*, /ITALIC/, and _UNDERLINE_ markup codes.)
Plain text messages are significantly smaller than HTML messages, so not only is this a courtesy to the recipient, but you also do yourself a favor. In addition, plain text message are less likely to be marked as spam. - Use images responsibly — Don't send images when it's not necessary. Use text whenever possible. If you do use images, always consider attaching them, rather than pasting them inline. This makes the images more accessible to the recipient, and it also makes them easier to detach if they are large.
- Don't use shortlinks — While shortlinks may serve a purpose for URLs that need to be copied by hand or remembered, they have no role in email. All short links will do in emails is make them more likely to get flagged as Junk/Span. Include full, original URLs, always!
Over the years, I have found that Internet users often fall into one of two categories in terms of how they communicate and use technology. I don't know if there is a good term to describe one group or the other, but I will group my observations here. To a large extent, both groups of people know and communicate with like-minded folks, and when they have to interact with the other group, will probably find it irksome. The left-side group is familiar with the ways of the right-side group, but very rarely is the right-side group; in this sense, they are "ignorant".
At a high level, folks on the left value efficiently communicating in a way that respects the readers of your post or those with whom you interact. They value interoperability and the ideal of open standards and protocols so that any compliant client can talk to any compliant server. They believe walled gardens are evil. They value user choice and user freedom. They value efficiency, doing more with less. Not all are hackers or even highly technical people, but most subscribe to the ideals of the hacker ethic. They are probably overwhelmingly older people; people that were using the Internet before the mid-1990s.
| Netiquette | Good netizens | Poor netizens |
|---|---|---|
| Dominating Era | Pre mid-1990s | Post mid-1990s |
| Social identification | Hackers, open source developers | "Mainstream" consumers |
| Community affiliations | IETF working groups, Linux User Groups, hacker conferences, etc. | — |
| Personas and interactions | Power users, technical, "producers", non-commercial Internet | Typical "consumers", non-technical, commercialized Internet |
| Security/Privacy | Value their (and others') security and privacy | Don't care |
| Dominant Internet interaction | Non-web (even non-HTTP) protocols | Web applications over HTTP |
| Traditional "thick" mail client (desktop or terminal) | MS Outlook, webmail or email "apps" | |
| OS | Linux, Mac OS, Windows 7 or earlier | Mac OS, Windows 8 or newer |
| Browser | Mozilla browser forks | Mainstream Chrome or Firefox |
| Computing | Desktop | Laptop/Mobile |
| Telephony | Desk phone (landline/VoIP) | Mobile |
| Email/netnews reply behavior | Inline/bottom post | Top post |
| Email formatting | Plain text | HTML |
| Identity | Have their own domain
Use private mail server or use paid email |
Use freemail identities |
| Websites | Simple HTML, minimal CSS/JavaScript | JavaScript/CSS-heavy |
| Form/Function | Function (and accessibility) over form | Form over function, even if it doesn't work well |
| Programming/Scripting Languages | C, Perl, PHP, shell | Python, JavaScript, TypeScript |
| Software Licensing | Permissive or copyleft licenses (GNU General Public License, MPL) | Permissive licenses only (e.g. MIT, Apache 2.0) |
| Bloat | Appreciate efficiency, avoid bloat in the first place.
Do more with less and believe "less is more" |
Don't care, waste bandwidth, storage, CPU, etc.
Do less with more and believe "more is more" |
| Email attachments | Avoid if possible, detach after receiving | Send frequently, never detach |
| Link sharing | URLs/URIs | QR codes |
| Structured conversations | Open protocols: Usenet and mailing lists | Walled gardens: Proprietary forums |
| Informal chat | Open protocols: IRC, XMPP | Walled gardens: SMS, Matrix, Slack, Discord, social media, etc. |
| Content Consumption | Open standards: RSS feeds | Viewing websites in a web browser |
| Outlook on AI | Anti-AI | Enamored by AI |
This is a high-level summary of basic differences. It's not all black and white, and people are rarely 100% on one side or the other.
Netiquette isn't static, either! You can change from one side to the other (hopefully shifting left in the table below). At first, it takes some discipline and adjustment, but you will appreciate how much more effectively you can communicate with people and how much easier your life becomes as well.