Posting Etiquette

1. It is particularly helpful if you put your message in some sort of context. This particularly true if you are responding to someone else's comments. Usually it is easy enough to copy the original's meaning to your own posting.
2. At the same time it is considered irritating - i.e. not polite - to just enclose the whole damn previous message - which everyone else including the originator - will have seen resent billyuns and billyuns of times. A little creative editing makes reading your message much more pleasant and therefore much more likely to be received with an open mind.
3. Attribution: most of us like to know who we are talking to. Just like with the regular post if you don't sign your letters we may be able to decipher enough from the post mark to make an educated guess as to where the letter originated. But it's still nice to see that the writer thinks enough of their own work/thoughts to sign his/her name to them. Some mail environments will automatically add your sig file to the posting. But I've found that a lot of folk don't know a sig file from a kill file.
4. Also when you are responding to someone else's comments/posting etc you really ought to acknowledge that that person said that. Usually by copying the person's name, address etc. But BEWARE of false attributions. This can really irritate other people and lead to those nasty flame wars that Papa Joe so wants to avoid.
5. And then there are all the little nuances like not using CAPITALS unless you want to emphasize something. And the fact that some mail environments have a difficult time with lines over 80 characters long suggests that we should try to limit lines to 60-70 characters. (mea culpa for my failures in this area).
6. Lastly, politeness always helps. If you are interested in spelling contests, flame wars or panty raids you will probably be better off in wreck.moto. There's a motorcycle gang over there which delights in seeing how much band width they can occupy with such. <Actually I am DoD but on good behaviour>.

Jonathan          who learned his way around on the net
		          the same way Sammuel Clemens learned 
		          his way around on the Mississippi.