Listserv "Netiquette"

Netiquette?!? What's that?
Remember that Golden Rule your kindergarten teacher taught you? "Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you." It still applies in the email world. There's great diversity in this caring group of over 300 service providers who will be seeing your messages. (And one of them may be your next boss!) When you communicate through email, your words are written… they’re stored someplace, if not more than one place. The morale of this story is… play nice or your words could come back to haunt you!

What types of messages are acceptable?
DOs and DON'Ts of formatting.
How to I reply to a person and not the whole group?
Too many messages? Try a daily digest.
Going on vacation? Let us stop your mail until you return.
System administrators.

Getting in, getting out and getting it down.

To join the ‘caofind’ email group, send an email to findcontact@caowash.org or visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caofind and ask to be included.
To suspend your membership temporarily while you're on vacation, medical leave, sabbatical, etc., just call 503.693.3238 or 503.693.3224 and tell us when you are leaving and when you will return. We'll be happy to take care of it for you.
To be permanently removed from the list (unsubscribe), send an email to caofind-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com.
Anyone who receives messages from the ‘caofind’ listserv can send messages to the entire group. Just address your email message to "caofind@yahoogroups.com" .

Lurk before you leap.
If you’re new to the ‘caofind’ email group, take some time to look around. Spend a little time watching messages or reading the archives to get a sense of how the listserv works. Then go ahead and join in.

Say what!?!
A few posting guidelines here…
We encourage messages about free or low-cost events and trainings which would be helpful to our clients, agencies or staff. We discourage solicitations and commercials requesting direct fundraising for an agency, or any for-profit sales pitches. We encourage questions trying to locate possible resources for people in need, but we discourage direct requests for monetary assistance for individuals.

When you send an email, you’re taking up other people’s time (or hoping to). It’s your responsibility to ensure the time others spend reading your message isn’t wasted. We’re all feeling the pinch of dwindling funding, so let’s respect the time and work being done by our fellow service providers.

How does this look? Getting down to basics.

Every message should have a subject line which reflects the content of the message. This allows the folks who see 100+ emails each day to prioritize messages, and quickly identify yours as not being SPAM.
A signature should be included in each message you send. Some email systems only display the email group address from which the message came (that would be the caofind@yahoogroups.com address). If someone wants to reply to you directly, they’ll be needing your email address or phone number.
All email accounts have capacity limits. In addition, much of Washington County is rural and there are areas where there’s no high speed connectivity available. Large files can take a long time to open, or may fill up someone’s email account causing all the messages following yours to bounce. (Not cool.) The maximum message size allowed by Yahoo! Groups is 1mb. If your message (including any attachments) exceeds 1mb, it will be returned to you. If you contact us, we may be able to help condense your message or attachment to a more reasonable size.
Speaking of attachments… Some email systems remove all attachments on incoming mail as a security measure. If you really want folks to know about your event, it’s a good idea to include the basics (date, time, place, cost and a brief description) in the body of your email message. And don’t forget to include contact information for the people who have questions.
When replying to a reply to a reply to a reply (no I’m not stuttering)… edit down your reply. Maybe you can remove parts of the previous chain of replies that don’t apply to your response. This removes the clutter and makes it easier to follow the conversation.
THIS IS CONSIDERED YELLING IN THE EMAIL WORLD! Using mixed case is not only more polite, it’s actually easier to read.
If you want to emphasize a word, try using symbols. Example: "This bread *could* be tasty if it wasn’t so green."
Let’s not use colored or fancy text and background colors or images. Some color and formatting choices make messages impossible to read, difficult to reply to and take much longer to open. While *you* might see pretty colors and formatting, the recipients often see HTML coding, bizarre characters, or a jumble of plain text.

Hey! I know that name, and I've been meaning to get in touch.
Be cautious when replying to a message you receive through our email group. A direct reply will be sent to everyone in the group. If you want to send a personal response to someone in particular (without embarrassing yourself and others), you’ll need to take an extra step or two. In most cases you can “Reply to all”, and the message you are preparing should display the listserv address and the original sender’s address in the “To:” address area of your message. Then you just need to delete the listserv address before sending your reply. If you can’t see the sender’s email address in the “To:” address area, you’ll need to type it in. (Hopefully, they included their email address in a signature with their message.)

I think I'm going *ding* *ding* dingy!
Do those emails just keep popping up all day long? Ding. Ding. Ding. Maybe we can help with that, too. We can change your listserv membership to “Daily Digest” which will combine all the messages for the day into one email. The biggest disadvantage to this is that all attachments are removed, and many of us want the flyers to print out and share with co-workers and clients. But the daily digest can cut down on the clutter in your mailbox.

Woohoo! I just won a free two week cruise!
Did you set an auto-reply that will be responding to your email while you’re gone on that cruise? Maybe we can help keep your mailbox from filling up while you’re gone? Just send us a little note (email will do) telling us when you are leaving and when you'll be back. We’ll stop your listserv mail while you’re gone and start it back up when you return. Easy as pie... and you'll enjoy your trip more knowing your email box won't be so full when you return.

Ouch! I've been flamed!
To be “flamed” means you’ve sent an email to the group that caused someone to respond in several, not-so-nice words. Please remember everyone sees the world differently. The best response to a flame is no response. The worst is a flaming response. If you can’t resist responding, please be polite.

Don't shoot the messenger! (Please?)
Last but not least, don’t blame the system administrators (that would be us) for the behavior of the system users. And speaking of system administrators… we’re here to help. If you have other questions about this email group, please just give us a call (503.693.3238 or 503.693.3224) or drop us an email.

Español • This page last reviewed 06/30/08