Mailing List Etiquette

As you may well know, REAL Software has a handfull of mailing lists that I participate on. They're a very good resource for people to get information about REALbasic; whether it's betas, general questions, n00bs, plugins, whatever. Each list has a purpose that's pretty well defined. But often people don't seem to understand how you should behave on a list. An occasional slip-up is fine btw... I'm just ranting about the general problem.

Problem One:
Each list has a topic. If what you are posting has absolutely nothing to do with the list topic, you shouldn't be posting it. It's not an overly complex idea. If you can somehow tie the post topic into the list topic, great, it's probably not an issue. For example -- making product announcements on the NUG is OK because that's the general programming question list and you're showcasing something you MwRB, or it's a tool for other programmers to use, etc. However, regurgitating the latest Apple marketing campaign for a mini-mac is not ok since it has nothing to do with RB. And frankly, it's not the original post that bugs me, it's the four day long discussion that causes the problem.

Problem Two:
When the list mom kills a thread.. let it die. Don't keep the thread going anyways and apologize. This one really chaps me, because I tend to be the list mom for OT threads and put the kabosh on them. This last thread I had to post the thread kill message multiple times, and I am still seeing occasional posts on it. My unwritten rule (well, it's written now!) is after I kill a thread twice, I just remove the offenders from the list. Missing the first "please stop" message may be an accident, but after two of them, you've had enough warning.

Problem Three:
If you are responding to a post, please have some content. If someone asks "Is such and so possible to do?", and you find yourself typing "Yes" or "No" and sending it off -- just stop. The point to the list is to teach other people and help them out, and those sort of responses help no one, cause bad feelings and just wastes bandwidth.

Problem Four:
This one has been bothering me more and more. Tactless, shamelss plugging of your product on a mailing list is considered poor form. There's a fine line between pointing out a product that can truly help someone, and just being self-serving. Basically, there's a right way and a wrong way to answer with 3rd party products that you sell.

Question: "How do you do X in REALbasic?"
Wrong way -- "You go here and buy this product and use feature Y".

Right way -- "You can do A, B and C in RB, but it's kind of tough. There's also 3rd party options I, J and K. K is free, but rather limited. I and J cost money. You can go here to purchase product Y as well, which is something that I/my company makes. Here's the reasons why Y is a better deal for you."

Doing it the right way gives the users information and they can make an informed decision. Doing it the wrong way just makes it sound like there's no other options. Sometimes the "wrong" way is the only way (for example, maybe product Y is the only way to do it period), and I'm not coming down on that. It's just the shameless plugs that make it seem like "my product is the only way" that is in poor taste.

Problem Five:
People need to learn to be patient with everyone else. Some people are asking "stupid questions" are probably just new to programming and need their hand held a little more. So if they're asking questions on the Games list that are very n00b-ish, point them to the getting started list. Don't blast them or tell them to RTFA. Thankfully, this behavior doesn't happen too often on our lists. And when you get an RTFA, it's usually a gentle one with the information included (just a little note attached that says "as you can see from the language reference"). But another side to that patience is in regards to bugs. Yes, REALbasic has its share of bugs (as do all complex programming environments), but I would say we close every third or fourth bug report because it's a bug in your code. So when you're posting to the mailing lists, don't be too quick to say something is REAL Software's bug. Even if it is our bug, don't be confrontational about it -- that helps no one. It's not like we put bugs in our product just to spite you. Quite often I'll see posts that say along the lines "this is so stupid, how could no one have noticed this horrible bug before? Man it must be so easy to fix". It's better to just say "I found this bug, you can reproduce it by doing foobar, it affects bazzlebar builds. Here's the bug report link for people who are interested."

I tend to laugh when people say a bug is easy to fix. Some of them are, don't get me wrong. But I've found that on the ones people point out as being "easy" to fix tend to be some of the hardest to get right. Just a funny observation.

By and large, the REAL Software mailing lists are some of the best I've ever seen in my life (and I'm on a large number of lists). The people posting on them tend to be very friendly and very helpful. It's rare that I see elitism on the lists, and people tend to just want to see everyone else succeed. So don't take my rant as an indication that the mailing lists are a terrible place with horrible people. I'm just griping about my pet peeves that mostly happen quite rarely on the list (with the exception of the product plugging, which tends to happen daily with some posters).