Netiquette (1995)
tools.ietf.org
tools.ietf.org
Shortly after a thick envelope came in the mail and I was very fortunate to catch it before my mother because in it was a stern warning from someone at Telia to stop scanning their equipment and several printed pages of this document on netiquette.
I didn't read it all so I can't be sure it was that exact Rfc, and I'm pretty sure it was in Swedish, but the sheer volume of pages makes me think it was either this rfc translated or something very similar that Telia kept on hand.
Either way, I never shat where I slept again and I read a lot about stealth scanning techniques and proxying after that. ☺
Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message,
include enough original material to be understood but no more. It
is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including
all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.
I always quote the portion to which I'm replying, and add my reply below that, and recently a reply came back saying - "I like the way you reply, I'm going to reply in the same style!"
Now I can quote an RFC.
For a long, I seemed to be the last person in my area to stick to proper quoting, but I'm afraid I've slipped over the past few years. I think I top-quote more often than not, these days. GMail is partially to blame for that.
Thank you for your email - please find my replies to
your various points interleaved below, each in context.Obviously sometimes it's most efficient to quote and interleave, when you want to reply to several points in a way that would be confusing without it. But with modern systems it's also fine to write a reply that doesn't make sense without the message it's in reply to, or a reply that quotes the whole message.
[edit: This entire discussion is now at roughly 7K, or 3351 bytes after gzip (this is copy pasted, not the html) -- that's 89 seconds at 300 baud if I do the math correctly.
By comparison, my original reply was 166 bytes and compressed to 146 -- so would download in a fraction of a second. But note how poor the compression ratio is. Still doubt this was born out of a quest to save bandwidth (as most(?) were batch up/downloading discussion-lists at the time. And 300 baud is roughly typing speed -- that's a long time ago.]
I don't exactly have fond memories (or more precisely my parents don't) of dialup (and later isdn) access -- we've never really had free local calls in Norway (and still don't). But since I was blasting away at 2400 baud, I was at least downloading faster-than-realtime (as in -- faster than you can read text).
A big impact may simply have been the advent of greater storage and bandwidth capacities allowing bigger emails. Along with that, email clients threading messages for you allows for relatively seamless review of history if necessary.
And, the "selectively quote, then reply below" concept opens the door for biased selective quotations, where anyone getting in on a thread in the middle will likely be misunderstand the true context of the email they're receiving. Better to have the whole history, or none of it.
> ... users today understand how to keep an email thread
> alive in their memory, and do not need to read the
> entire chain, selectively quoted or not, before getting
> to the reply.
> Along with that, email clients threading messages for you
allows for relatively seamless review of history if necessary.At least, that's what happens when I use any of the standard email clients. but I don't. I use a really old, completely non-standard email client so I can, on every reply, extract the text that matters and assemble it into a single conversation, which I then continue.
Yes, I freely admit I'm unusual, but I find it incredibly frustrating that all the systems other people say "Well, it works for me" are, in my context, unusable. And when you say:
> Along with that, email clients threading messages
> for you allows for relatively seamless review of
> history if necessary.
Scrolling usually happens from top to bottom. While email clients could simply send the scrollbar to the bottom of the page by default, displaying the message from the bottom, letting the user read the quoted message if they want, it would probably be hard to implement without breaking HTML email.
Scrolling from bottom to top is natural when you want to see something again because you already scrolled to the bottom, but it feels weird when you have to first read the bottom of the page, then scroll up.
The schema for discovering old things is to go down -- any excavation, you find the newest artifacts on top, generally, and older the lower you go. That pile of letters on the kitchen table, newest on top. Grids, pencil sketches, original painting decisions are all underneath the newest layer of paint in a painting.
I ramble, but, the thought that someone could or should summarize a 30 email conversation, and rewrite that summary each time a new email is sent, is just silly to me.
If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make
sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context
helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!
Email clients hide quotes by default and also quote by default.
People don't treat email the same (who has the time to summarize/edit the quote anymore).
Gmail has made top posting the default which means most users will top quote.
Threading is a bit better.
Feel free to continue bottom posting but remember not to quote the whole damn thing and remember to keep the quote short enough that I hopefully don't have to scroll down to see what you added. I personally find top posting easier to follow with modern threading.
Which clients?
> Gmail has made top posting the default which means most users will top > quote.
Outlook already did this. At least with Outlook, the UI is broken, so people understand what you mean when you complain. Gmail being smart, people have a hard time grasping what you mean when you try to get them to quote "smart". And both approaches are wrong (IMNHO).
> Feel free to continue bottom posting but remember not to quote the > whole damn thing and remember to keep the quote short enough that I > hopefully don't have to scroll down to see what you added. I > personally find top posting easier to follow with modern threading.
Why would you have to scroll when "[e]mail clients hide quotes by default" ?
Anyway, lets not continue this into a flame war about top/bottom/proper quoting -- but I'm genuinely confused about your points above (they seem to contradict each other?).
I really need to play a bit with sup -- I hear they did a lot of things right.
For what it's worth, I think threading with quoting/conversations is still an unsolved problem (and I'm not just talking corner-cases and presence/absence of word wrap etc -- just what is the best way to present a conversation that a) makes conversation flow easily, and with readily available (correct amounts) of context while it is active, and b) reads like a reasonable transcript/conversation without too much redundancy for someone seeing the thread after the conversation has started. So far I think manually quoted replies, with bottom posting is by far the best).
> who has the time to summarize/edit the quote anymore
Most people on high-quality discussion lists? I think this goes more towards a "what is email as a medium"-type thing. Sometimes a quick reply is fine -- but if you are writing more than a paragraph, it is probably worth the time to put some effort into it (ironically, actively counteracted by things like hn's simple text-input field -- unless you invoke a proper editor, for example using the "It's all text!"-firefox extension, or ctrl-i for external editor with vimperator).
I think it's more that people don't really compose emails anymore -- they don't invoke a proper editor (whatever that may be for the user in question -- but something that at least allows a minimum of easy copy/cut/paste -- I would say vim/emacs, some might want something a little more modern). But when you're given an augmented text-field (the so-called rich web editors) -- ofcourse you won't be writing much. It's a horrible writing/editing experience.
*This Subnet Belongs To Me*
The ‘Net is a creature of patches and parts,
As free as the hawk on the breeze,
With billions of voices and hands and hearts,
Ruled only by RFCs.
O, Internet RFC 1-8-5-5,
Your paragraphs murmer to me!
No protocol yet keeps the ‘Net alive
As well as this RFC.
When mailing, recall that the ‘Net’s not secure;
Let copyright laws be your guide;
Ignore any chains; let your quotes stay pure;
Flame not; use a sig; don’t chide.
Check every address; mark your messages “long”;
Use smileys and caps sparingly;
Don’t send an attachment; kneejerks are wrong;
So speaketh this RFC.
O, Internet RFC 1-8-5-5,
Your sections are wise as can be!
A luser or guru will surely thrive
By trusting this RFC.
When chatting, be patient and always assume
That talk is as cheap as the dirt;
When posting to news, don’t send spam, or Boom!
Some hax0r will make you hurt!
The guidlines exist both for wisemen and fools,
They’re meant to be read carefully;
For can you imagine what chaos rules
Without such an RFC?
O, Internet RFC 1-8-5-5,
Our last and best hope, patently
The ‘Net is a queen-less and smoke-filled hive
Without such a thing
Without such a thing
Without such an RFC! Twas the night before start-up and all through the net,
not a packet was moving; no bit nor octet.
The engineers rattled their cards in despair,
hoping a bad chip would blow with a flare.
The salesmen were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of data nets danced in their heads.
And I with my datascope tracings and dumps
prepared for some pretty bad bruises and lumps.
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
There stood at the threshold with PC in tow,
An ARPANET hacker, all ready to go.
I could see from the creases that covered his brow,
he'd conquer the crisis confronting him now.
More rapid than eagles, he checked each alarm
and scrutinized each for its potential harm.
On LAPB, on OSI, X.25!
TCP, SNA, V.35!
His eyes were afire with the strength of his gaze;
no bug could hide long; not for hours or days.
A wink of his eye and a twitch of his head,
soon gave me to know I had little to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
fixing a net that had gone plumb berserk;
And laying a finger on one suspect line,
he entered a patch and the net came up fine!
The packets flowed neatly and protocols matched;
the hosts interfaced and shift-registers latched.
He tested the system from Gateway to PAD;
not one bit was dropped; no checksum was bad.
At last he was finished and wearily sighed
and turned to explain why the system had died.
I twisted my fingers and counted to ten;
an off-by-one index had done it again... 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the LAN
No malware was stirring, not even LoveSan;
The firewalls were racked by the router with care,
In hopes that no hacker soon would be there;
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of emails danced in their heads;
And me with my MacBook, and fresh packet cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out from the pager there arose such a clatter,
I sprang to my desk to see what was the matter.
Away to the browser I flew like a flash,
Came through the VPN and refreshed the cache.
The sign on the certificate gave me to know
The session was safe, so I opened it - Lo!
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature email, and in text that was clear,
With a new device driver, with a quick "ho ho ho",
I knew in a moment it was our CSO.
More rapid than eagles his memos they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, firewall! now, filter! now, intrusion detection!
On, event correlation! deep packet inspection!
Build layered defense! to the top of the wall!
Now block away! block away! block away all!"
As alarms that before the wild network worm fly,
When they meet with my console, mount up to the sky,
So up to the network the sensors they flew,
With the rack full of gear, and the CSO too.
And then, with a twinkling, I heard on my cell
The custom ring-tone - the network was well.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down to my inbox he came with a bound.
His message was brief, what was afoot?
Were servers and systems safe at the root?
A bundle of appliances stacked on his rack,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
Their lights -- how they twinkled! Their vendors - how merry!
They stopped all attacks, they paged my BlackBerry!
The poor little hackers were drawn up like a bow,
And tied up in knots in the honeypot below;
The stump of net packets held tight in our teeth,
With logs all analyzed, traceroutes were a breeze;
Our policies sound, vulnerabilities patched,
Our security systems just could not be matched.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his audit,
tested the firewalls; then turned to report it,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up our T3 he rose;
He sprang to his limo, gave his consultants a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!" - Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters
are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges
will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator
if your ever receive one."You network privileges will be revoked". Well that worked.
I miss those days.
"Today, the community of Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These 'Newbies' are unfamiliar with the culture and don't need to know about transport and protocols. In order to bring these new users into the Internet culture quickly, this Guide offers a minimum set of behaviors which organizations and individuals may take and adapt for their own use."
by the way, if you read the rfc, you will see that many references are before 1993.
Still very much true.
If I do something for someone and then never hear from them again, I would be somewhere on the scale from disappointed to annoyed. A one line genuine expression of thanks takes very little time for the recipient. Composing it and getting it right can be difficult and time-consuming, but is, to my mind, always the right thing to do.
Make it brief, make it genuine.
Personally I just express how much they'd be helping me if they did what I'm asking and how much I'd appreciate it instead.
ESPECIALLY in list, bug report, or other group discussions where you've encountered a bug. If the fix solves it, that's good to know. If not, well, it's less satisfying, but also good to know. And it saves the next person to come along from wondering whether or not what you're discussing has any merits at all.
No need to be verbose about it, but a quick "Hey, that worked, thanks!" (with appropriate top-quoted context) would be just about perfect.
I thank them in advance, to make clear that they'd be doing me a great favor if they reply. Afterwards, I thank them for having taken that time.
Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you
have really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via
FLAME ON/OFF enclosures. For example:
FLAME ON: This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth
it takes to send it. It's illogical and poorly
reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with me.
FLAME OFF
I really think that if more people took time every day to scour the annals of IETF RFC history, they'd find answers to many of the "new" problems we discover every few years.
Remember that talk is an interruption to the other person. Only
use as appropriate. And never talk to strangers.
Back then there were a lot of different ways to communicate with other folks on the same system, although many of them have modern analogues.
"talk" was a primitive IM system that could be used to communicate between two people logged into shell (tty) accounts on a unix system. When initiating a talk connection it would pop up a prompt on the other user's terminal, which is why it's mentioned as being an interruption. It would interrupt someone else's workflow quite abruptly.
"write" was even more primitive, it was a way to directly send text to someone else's terminal.
Back then the community of users was small, not truly anonymous, and there were strong external authorities that helped prevent abuses (most net users were students or academics, abusing systems could get you kicked out of school or fired). As the internet became more widespread a lot of these features were locked down and turned off on most systems.
Note that this is about the Unix command "talk" (a primitive chat shown directly the recipient's shell). This is not about aktually talking to people.
The phrase "never talk to strangers" is just a mnemonic.
As much as I've always been irked by some items in this document (e.g. all-caps, chain letters, etc)... I definitely do not miss the days when half of all discussion in any given forum was meta-babble about how to properly post in the forum. I swear, back in the mid-90's it felt like every single Usenet thread devolved into a shouting match between "bottom posters" and "top posters"! Plonk!
This may be blasphemy, but even at that time I always believed that the tools would have to evolve to fit human nature rather than the other way around. Why not just improve your Usenet readers (even the shell-based ones) to minimize quoted text regardless of where it's found? You know, like every single email client does today without us thinking anything of it?
Such basic usability features were slow to appear... not because it's all that technically challenging, but rather due to cultural resistance and purity dogma. Nonsense. If any system of human interaction requires a high degree of deliberate and manual cooperation, then it's not tenable and can be improved by technology.
Do they now? As far as I've managed to figure out, gmail has a broken conversation view that only works half the time, and then there's sup -- any other email clients that do a good enough job of threading quoted conversations?
I agree in principle -- fix the software -- but that implies fixing the protocol first -- and we haven't done that yet. XMPP does a little something to help (for conversations) -- but isn't a suitable solution for email-like functionality.
I'd love to be wrong -- but I've yet to use any email client that has decent "smart" threading of conversations (I don't use sup -- as of yet anyway).
Ahh, the sweet, sweet sound of a Usenet troll landing in your killfile.
If it didn't violate half the rules, I'd email this to everyone I know. Perhaps I'll fax it instead...
ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc1855.txt;type=a
I remember the first time I used talk. I think it is what got me hooked on UNIX.
A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these "flames") even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldn't be surprised if you get flamed and it's prudent not to respond to flames.