etiquette, “standards” and online social environments…

this posting is based on a response to an email I got asking for advice on a problem on a mail list over what some folks see as “proper” behavior and how to convince others to follow it. The answer is not what I think they were expected, and the more I thought about it, I felt it might make an interesting conversation piece on general issues of “usage standards” and online etiquette issues — and it’s very different than I used to think on these issues, so I wanted to air them more generally and see what folks think…

If you have time, a “sanity check” and answers to a couple of questions on the subject of “included text” would be much appreciated.

I suspect that for some reason I happen to be particularly sensitive to failure to abide by this.

Probably.

The key word here is “ask”. there are two classes of things in the list documentation.

They are suggestions, not requirements, for a reason. What you are essentially trying to do is convince everyone to do things YOUR way. think of any social situation, whether it’s top-quoting in email, or cel-phones in restaurants, or talking in movies, or using your stupid turn signals while driving. Even where there is force of law behind it, you have those that wont do it.

Educating folks won’t completely solve the problem, if it is in fact a problem. Some folks don’t know any better. Others, however, have simply decided they prefer it another way, and why should they change for your benefit? How would you react if they came and asked you to change to meet their preferences?

So down this road lies disappointment, madness, anger and in the case of driving, road rage and sometimes, being shot. And even if you avoid most of that, you STILL won’t really solve the problem, because even if you teach everyone who doesn’t know and convince everyone who disagrees, next week, there’ll be new people showing up that simply start the process over for you. So ultimately, the only thing you’re going to do here is frustrate yourself.

I used to be fairly active in trying to educate the community to the “right” way of doing things — and I’ve finally come to the realization there is no one right way. Generational differences (both age based and “how long you’ve been on the internet” generations), and tool differences (which tools you grew up with, where tools like AOL and Outlook encourage a specific style, and other tools tend to encourage one you’re more compatible with) make this really impossible, since many of those folks aren’t in the “don’t know better” class, but in the “this is how I grew up, why don’t YOU change” part instead. And if you think about it, by sheer numbers, AOL and Outlook would win any vote, no?

Think about it from the point of view of a typical user. I’m not typical, by any means, but I have 400ish people in my address book, and a somewhat larger group of people I communicate with, and 15-20 mailing lists I’m involved with in some form or another. Some lists are set reply-to list, some aren’t. Some users hate if you CC them if you mail the lists, others (like me) prefer that you do it. Some top-reply, others don’t. I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep track of who likes what email which way. Even if I could, the most likely response to having to keep track of all the differences in things people prefer. So — I do things the way I’m comfortable with, because the alternative is, basically, silence. Which I know some people might prefer, but we’ll ignore that.

As way of explaining this, imagine I start sending everyone who emails me a note saying “sorry, you MUST email me in 18 point Helvetica text colored red, or I won’t read it” — those are exceptionally arbitrary values, but so are all of these other things (reply-to, cc’s on list mail, top posting replies, etc). Would you actually remember my demand to do email to me MY way? probably not. Would you actually do it? Of course not (unless I was the only person in the universe with the answer to a question and you were desperate, and then, probably not until earlier emails were ignored or rejected). Is it reasonable for me to expect you to contort like that just to send me email? Hell no. (actually, one person I know actually DOES send me email in that format, but he’s just being pedantic and refuses to acknowledge he can’t tell the entire universe to do email his way, and that’s his response to this argument in a previous existence).

And that’s why I’ve come to believe that trying to push personal preferences out to others is the wrong thing to do. You have your preference. But to the other person, you’re one of 100 or so people on one of half a dozen mail lists, and they all have different preferences and standards, and how is that person supposed to keep it straight?

They can’t. And asking them to is unfair. Telling them they HAVE to is arrogant. Neither works, so all it does is create conflict and stress and really doesn’t solve anything useful. So what I tell people today, basically, is to chill. The internet is a diverse universe, and anything that attempts to regulate or limit that diversity is asking for failure — and will get it.

Doesn’t mean education isn’t important. It’s always good to try to set useful standards and get people information they can use to learn — but so is diversity and tolerance and understanding and moving beyond concepts of “one true way”. So what I try to do, and what I encourage people to do now, is not this kind of educational activism (because it won’t work, and actively pisses off some folks), but instead look at what you can control, which is the incoming data stream.

If you have a specific preferences, then you should use what you DO control: your mailbox, your incoming mail stream, your mail client, your computer (and perhaps mail server) to implement those preferences. Instead of telling everyone to send you email in 18 point red helvetica — teach your server or client to display it that way. Anything that really bugs you, the way to fix it successfully is to fix it on your own machine, not attempt to distribute that requirement out to hundreds or thousands of people who might not agree with you and will probably ignore you. It’s a lot more effective to look for technological solutions you CAN control than social solutions you don’t.

And anything you can’t fix technologically, one of the best pieces of advice I ever gave myself was both simple and tough to actually buy into: “get over it”. Learn to relax and just not worry about stuff you can’t fix; I find my life is a lot happier when I’m not tilting at windmills.

For me, it’s a common courtesy — on a list, at least, I appreciate that some people do have different styles in personal communication — to edit out that which isn’t necessary in a response.

But what if we, say, did a survey and found out most people want it the other way? Would YOU change and do it their way? You’re making a basic assumption here that your way is the “right” way, and therefore, everyone else is wrong. it’s a lot more ambiguous in reality, and even if you ARE “right”, it doesn’t matter. Some will disagree, and they’ll just continue being that splinter under your fingernail.

The main issue is to do with space and efficiency: This calendar year’s [list] mailbox is 145MB which

is probably at least twice as large as it need be simply because of those who include 40 lines of quote for a two line reply.

Sorry, I don’t have a lot of support for this any more. Disk is cheap. bandwidth is cheap. it’s just not a REAL issue, it’s a perceived one.

Reading individual messages is slower than it could be simply because of the amount of extra work that Mail has to do. Searching is less efficient. And backing up my system is slower etc.

marginally. I just think you’re rationalizing out what you already believe. it’s no longer a real or persuasive argument

One of the behaviours that irks me most is the inclusion of the personalised list “footer” in replied to the list, e.g.

This email sent to [list]

Which is one sed script away from not being your problem any further. Just modify your archives to fit your preferences.

I have drawn attention to the etiquette document in occasional postings to the list, and in a few cases of particularly egregious transgression mailed individuals off-list. The problem, however, persists, and even some of those I’ve mailed directly continue to “misbehave”.

well, yeah. what if they don’t agree with you? why should your opinion win? You only speak for yourself, not the list, not even the majority of the list, not even necessarily any significant population of the list. Why is there only ONE way this stuff should be done, anyway?

I have three questions for you:

First, am I simply being over-sensitive? This is an irritant for me, but perhaps no-one else is bothered.

I don’t think you’re being over-sensitive. you are what you are. I will, however, phrase it differently, and note that you’re pretty far out on the edge of the bell curve of responses. There’s someone over on the other edge, too, and if you two ever get into an argument, it won’t be pretty… (grin)

Secondly, in especially bad cases, where a user persists in posting short replies with large volumes of quoted text (and where such inclusion isn’t necessary to maintain context) — here I’m thinking of about a 10+:1 ratio, and including the footer — what is a reasonable response? Excluding someone from the list, even on a temporary basis, does seem excessive.

IMHO, none. unless you are the list admin. so if you want to complain to the admin, that’s fine, but it’s up to the admin to ENFORCE things, and frankly, what you want enforced is admitted upfront to be optional (it’s not a rule, it’s a note of etiquette). So — if it were me, I’d probably tell you to relax and learn to deal with the fact that other people do things differently. Hmm. I just did. oh.

Thirdly, might it be possible at least for quoted footers to be automatically excised?

that’s up to the list admin, but I wouldn’t. there are too many other things that really matter that I’d consider higher priorities.

Frankly, I don ‘t see this as the LIST’s problem, but yours. and solving it by telling everyone else to change, instead of changing your local environment, is a failed policy. 20 years of trying to do this on mailing lists and USENET merely proves this to be true, IMHO. So I’d encourage you to look at what you can do to tailor your environment to your own preferences and learn to love (or ignore) the rest, and not try to change the world to match your ideas of what it ought to be. Down that road lies nothing but frustration and anger, and life’s too short for that.

chuq

(thoughts, folks?)

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