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Comment by jbk | Hacker News Reader

As someone who answers a lot of e-mails every day (VLC support in my free-time), I wish people would actually follow those kind of rules...

Though, I wish there was a point on politeness and about the "tone" of an e-mail.

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This is a great suggestion. I'll add this in to the article.

Politeness is so important that I've set my email "signature" to "Thanks!"

More often than not, it's appropriate to leave it in.

Could I also suggest a modification about the 'Reply to all or reply to sender?'. The advice should be modified in case of mailing-lists.

Having thanks in the signature can be really irritating sometimes though. An example would go something like:

Hey,

Can you do this inconvenient thing that is a lot of work because I kind of slacked off a little this week.

Thanks!

Only made worse by the use of "TIA", which says, "Not only am I presumptuous but I can't even be bothered to express gratitude with a complete sentence."

There's more to being polite than setting your signature to "Thanks!" In fact, it's more likely to come off as inauthentic fluff than actual politeness. Which is more polite?

    If you frobulate the widgets one more time, 
    I'll kill you.

    Thanks!

Or:

    I know I'm being a pain about this, but could you
    please not frobulate the widgets anymore?

Dont underestimate the importance of "inauthentic fluff" -- such is the basis of courtesy and grace. I think dropping the fluff because is seems inauthentic (whatever that means) is THE basic social interaction mistake made by programmers and other math-y people.

I'm not arguing against having manners, I'm just saying that they're not enough. You can't say something rude and then make it all better with a token "please" or "thank you".

Interesting. I type all that out afresh each time. I deliberately don't correct any typos, so that regular listeners know it's been added by hand. The personal touch, or too much artifice? I could never decide.

I never put an exclamation mark in, though!

THanks,

* to3m 8

That doesn't fool very many people, and makes an especially sour impression on the people who know you are faking.

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