The following are some guidelines with which users of Hanoi LUG mailing list should familiarize themselves. Following these guidelines helps to keep the list interesting to more people, and helps to avoid repetitious threads on list etiquette.

We also recommend people to present themselves when they enter on the list. At least do it once.

This document borrows heavily from Webdesign-L's Policies Page.

• Send discussion messages to hanoilug@lists.hanoilug.org
• Don’t send “out-of-office” or “vacation” auto replies to the list.
• Reply to the list or the original poster, not to both, unless you are specifically requested to do so.

• When starting a new thread, create a new message (replying while changing the subject can break threading for many people).
• Change the subject if you intend to take the thread off on a tangent.
• Use descriptive subject lines

• Do not top-post; write your reply below the quoted portion(s) of the message to which you are replying.
• Quote only parts which are relevant, the snipped parts should be replaced with some marker to the effect that “there was text here”
• If writing in Vietnamese, please use Unicode (usual UTF-8 encoding) or VIQR when Unicode is not available
• Don’t write in capitals only, it is considered like shouting

This list exist to make sure that Hanoi Linux users can get together, help each other and have fun, although most of us are professional, it does not mean that we can’t have some humor too. However as a general rule of thumb, the main subject is GNU/linux and free / open source software in general. Following subjects should be subject to caution

• Proprietary software only question and discussion
• Racist, sexist or discriminatory statement
• obvious trolling such as “windows vs linux”, emacs vs vi or gnome vs kde
• Illegally obtained hardware and software
• Pornography and/or violent content
• Anything illegal

Job posting are kind of OK, but should be directly related to Free/open source software

• At least three languages (Vietnamese, French and English) are well-represented on this list. English-only and Vietnamese-only posts are acceptable, although we expect as much vietnamese content as possible

• Behave like a professional.
• Be respectful of others’ sensitivities and backgrounds.
• Avoid profanity.
• Avoid personal attacks.
• Keep etiquette and off-topic reminders polite and off-list.
• Eat your own dog food, use free/open source software to send email, avoid attachment in proprietary format.