What a mailing list is?: It is an e-mail based discussion forum open for everyone's subscription. When you send an email to the mailing list address, a copy of your e-mail is broadcast to everyone who is subscribed to that mailing list. This is clearly an outstanding way to provide a simple and effective communication mechanism. Since a mailing list may have a lot of subscribers, there is a common set of etiquette guidelines that every subscriber should observe. Please go on reading.

Respect the mailing list type. There are up to now three types of lists; the most used ones are poesia-user and poesia-devel.

• The "User" lists is where you can send questions and comments about configuration, setup, usage and other "user" types of question.
• The "Developer" lists is where you can send questions and comments about the actual software source code and general "development" types of question.

Some questions are appropriate for posting on both the "user" and the "developer" lists. In this case, pick one and only one. Do not cross post.

Join the list that are appropriate for you and ask smart questions. You are welcome to join any of our mailing lists. You can choose to lurk, or actively participate; it's up to you. Please make sure that you are joining the list that is appropriate for the topic that you would like to discuss. For instance, do not ask a configuration question on developer's list.

Keep your email short and to the point. Write short e-mails. It is much better to try to pack a lot of informative information into as small of an email as possible. If you are replying to a previous email, it is a good idea to only quote the parts that you are replying to and to remove the unnecessary parts. This makes it easier for people to follow a thread as well as making the email archives easier to search and read.

Do your best to ensure that you are not sending HTML or "Stylelized" email to the list. If you are using Outlook or Outlook Express or Eudora, chances are that you are sending HTML email by default. There is usually a setting that will allow you to send "Plain Text" email.

Watch where you are sending email. Our mailing lists have set the Reply-To to go back to the sender. That means that when you Reply to a message, it will go to the original author directly, if you don't change the address. The reason is because we consider e-mails header munging possibly harmful. Be careful of this as mostly you may intend to reply to a message directly to all list subscribers and not only to the sender. If you want more info about e-mail munging read this.