1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
|
---
title: Effective-ish online communication
date: 2022-09-17
---
These are some general recommendations that I believe make communicating
with me, at least, easier and/or more effective, including communication
conventions that make my life easier. Please note that what I prefer may
not be what others prefer and shall not be treated as a general
guideline for communications, although many of these are common in the
free software community.
1. Write a descriptive subject for emails. Do not send emails with an
empty subject or no subject header. The subject should be give the
receiver a brief idea of what the email is about.
2. Send complete information. When telling me something or requesting
something, please provide complete background information, knowledge
required, and other relevant context. This prevents back-and-forth
communication along the lines of "and now I need to know ... but you
didn't tell me that so can you please give that to me". Providing
context defragments conversations which increases efficiency.
3. When using instant messaging such as IRC, do not split one sentence
into multiple messages (unless, of course, if your message exceeds
the character limit). Fragmentation reduces readability.
4. Do not use excessive emojis.
5. Be direct rather than polite. As the sender, do not use polite
expressions like "you did quite well in that presentation" when in
reality, the sender believes that the presentation is not "quite
well". Direct critique and suggestions are very welcome here.
Politeness is acceptable if it does not interfere with honest
conveying of information.
6. [Don't ask to ask.](./ask.html)
7. Use plain text email. Both hard-wrapped and non-hard-wrapped emails
are acceptable. If you do hard-wrap, please wrap at 72 characters
for English. Chinese, if hard-wrapped, should be at approximately 36
characters. Non hard-wrapped emails should [specify format=flowed
according to RFC3676](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt).
8. Interweave the original message with the response when replying to
an email and remove irrelevant parts (i.e. greetings, closings,
signatures, etc.) of the quoted original email.
|
