[oslc-core] OSLC mailing lists and open community email etiquette

[Dave]

The topic of "mailing list etiquette" came up at the last Core
Workgroup meeting and I took the "action item" to raise the topic, and
remind folks about proper etiquette for an open community mailing list
like this. I looked around for some existing guidelines and found none
that were just right, so I write up some of my own guidelines

* Correct Subject. Use an accurate and descriptive subject for your
email messages and when the topic of conversation changes in a thread,
then please change the subject to match.

* Preserve the thread. When responding to a message on the mailing
list make sure you respond directly to that message. Don't start a new
thread to respond and don't reply to a digest message, because that
will split the thread of conversation.

* Do not participate via Digest. If you intend to participate in
mailing list conversations, then do not subscribe to the digest list.
Responding to digest emails does not preserve threads of conversation.

* Post in plain text. Configure your email client send plain text
emails to the mailing list and no rich text or HTML. If you need
pretty colors and formatting to get your point across then create a
wiki page.

* Prevent out-of-office replies. Make sure your email client does not
send out-of-office or on-vacation emails to the mailing list.

One item that I did not mention was "top-posting" which is a good
practice for some and an anti-pattern for others. I'm not sure we need
to mandate top or bottom posting. See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style

Eventually, I would like to promote this set of rules to the wiki.

What do folks think? Is this a worthwhile start? What have a left out?

Thanks,
Dave