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Mailing Lists

A mailing list is an electronic discussion forum that anyone can subscribe to. When someone sends an email message to the mailing list, a copy of that message is broadcast to everyone who is subscribed to that mailing list. Mailing lists are the primary means of communication for people working within the Apache Tiles™ Project.

Guidelines

Mailing lists provide a simple and effective communication mechanism. With potentially thousands of subscribers, there is a common set of etiquette guidelines that you should observe. Please keep on reading.

Respect the mailing list type

  • The "User" list is where you can send questions and comments about configuration, setup, usage and other "user" types of questions.
  • The "Developer" (or "Dev") list is where you can send questions and comments about the actual software source code and general "development" types of questions. Questions about the "future" of Tiles are best addressed to the dev list.

Some questions may seem appropriate for posting on both the "user" and the "developer" lists. In this case, pick one and only one. Do not cross post, unless a Committer asks that the thread be moved to the other list.

Asking a configuration question on the developers list is discouraged because the time of our developers is as precious as yours. By contacting the developers directly instead of the user base you are abusing resources. In fact, it is unlikely that you will get a quicker answer, if any answer at all

Conversely, a question about the future of Tiles or the operation of the Tiles project is best posted to the dev list. The focus of the user list should be one "how" to do something with the framework we have today. The focus of the dev list is how we want to do something with a future version of the framework.

Join the lists that are appropriate for your discussion.
Please make sure that you are joining the list that is appropriate for the topic or product that you would like to discuss. For example, please do not join the Tiles mailing list and ask questions about Tomcat. Instead, you should join the Tomcat User list and ask your questions there.

If you would like to discuss a topic outside the usual scope of our mailing lists, please create a QuickTopic and invite others to join the conversation.

Ask smart questions.
Every volunteer project obtains its strength from the people involved in it. You are welcome to join any of our mailing lists. You can choose to lurk, or actively participate; it's up to you. The level of community responsiveness to specific questions is generally directly proportional to the amount of effort you spend formulating your question. Eric Raymond and Rick Moen have even written an essay entitled "Asking Smart Questions" precisely on this topic.

Keep your email short and to the point.
If your email is more than about a page of text, chances are that it won't get read by very many people. It is much better to try to pack a lot of informative information (see above about asking smart questions) into as small of an email as possible. If you are replying to a previous email, it is a good idea to only quote the parts that you are replying to and to remove the unnecessary bits. This makes it easier for people to follow a thread as well as making the email archives easier to search and read.

Do your best to ensure that you are not sending HTML or "Stylelized" email to the list.
If you are using Outlook or Outlook Express or Eudora, chances are that you are sending HTML email by default. There is usually a setting that will allow you to send "Plain Text" email. If you are using Microsoft products to send email, there are several bugs in the software that prevent you from turning off the sending of HTML email.

Do not cross post messages.
In other words, pick a mailing list and send your messages to that mailing list only. Do not send your messages to multiple mailing lists. The reason is that people may be subscribed to one list and not to the other. Therefore, some people will only see part of the conversation.

Watch where you are sending email. The majority of our mailing lists have set the Reply-To to go back to the list. That means that when you Reply to a message, it will go to the list and not to the original author directly. The reason is because it helps facilitate discussion on the list for everyone to benefit from. Be careful of this as sometimes you may intend to reply to a message directly to someone instead of the entire list. The appropriate contents of the Reply-To header is an age-old debate that should not be brought up on the mailing lists. You can examine opposing points of view condemning our convention and condoning it. Bringing this up for debate on a mailing list will add nothing new and is considered off-topic.

Don't feed the trolls.

"In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who posts rude or offensive messages on the Internet, such as in online discussion forums, to disrupt discussion or to upset its participants (see Anonymous Internet posting). "Troll" can also mean the message itself or be a verb meaning to post such messages. "Trolling" is also commonly used to describe the activity."

For more, see Internet Trolls in the Wikipedia.

If someone makes an off-topic post that offends you, our best advice is to filter posts from that person to the trash. When subscribers do choose to respond, sometimes a thread will feed on itself, and grow out of control. When that happens, our best advice is to filter the entire thread to the trash.

Our spam filters will catch most types of commercial spam, but troll spam is a hard for software to spot. The best defense is to withhold from the troll what he or she wants most: A response.

Archives

Archives Carrying Tiles User List

Subscribing

Now that you've read the guidelines (you have read the rest of the page, haven't you?), please subscribe to whichever Tiles lists are of interest.

  • TILES-USER Mailing List - Subscribe to this list to communicate with other developers that are using Tiles for their own applications, including questions about the installation of Tiles, and the usage of particular Tiles features.
    [ Subscribe ]
    [ Unsubscribe ]
  • TILES-USER Digest - Subscribe to this list to receive a daily digest of the Tiles USER list.
    [ Subscribe ]
    [ Unsubscribe ]
    If you subscribe to the Digest, you can also post to the User list. (Just don't quote the entire Digest mailing in a reply!)

To subscribe to the Dev list, please visit the product development area.