Guidelines for posting on DELTA-L

2 May 2020

M.J. Dallwitz

When posting on DELTA-L, please give some thought to making the list archives more useful to people looking for information.

(1) When starting a new topic, start afresh with a new ‘Subject’ (rather than replying to an unrelated message), and make the subject informative for people who are browsing or searching the list.

(2) When replying to a message, quote only the particular point(s) to which you are replying, and place your replies underneath each point. If making general comments on the subject, don’t quote previous messages at all.

(3) When replying, consider changing the subject of the message if the original subject wasn’t informative enough, or if your reply relates only to an incidental part of the original message. Put the old subject in the body of the email rather than including it in the new subject, i.e.

Subject: My new subject

- From: Joe Blow  (Subject: Joe's subject)

rather than

Subject: My new subject (was: Joe's subject)

- From: Joe Blow

This keeps the archives neater, but still makes it easy for readers to find the original posting should they wish to do so.

DELTA home page