Mail will probably not reach me unless you adhere to these rules:
- Do NOT send email through an open-relay, or through an otherwise
poorly maintained server. I do use RFC Ignorant (other than for whois).
- Do NOT send email in violation of SPF
rules.
- Do NOT send email likely to be flagged as spam by
SpamAssassin. I realize this
is the least deterministic filter I have, but it rarely gets a false
positive (or false negative ...). If you don't happen to hear from me, and
you followed all the other rules, send me a polite email asking me to check
my SA drop.
- If your mail is rejected and has a "spam-report" included:
- Do NOT quote your original message if you send me a notice to check the SA drop, as that may trigger SA again.
- DO send me an e-mail with the contents of the "spam-report" if you
are unable to understand how to correct the issue.
- DO pgp sign and/or pgp encrypt your message. By doing so, you
can bypass some filters.
- If you don't do this, only use text/plain.
- Do NOT send me email with a content-type of text/html. I can't read
this in my client, and it WILL be filtered out.
one essay why
- Do NOT send me email with a content-type of multipart/alternative.
There is no reason for this. Anything you can say,
you can say with text/plain. Considering the only thing I'll see anyway
is the text/plain portion, if you can't say it with text/plain, you wouldn't
have said it.
- Do NOT send me attachments from an e-mail address that isn't whitelisted.
If we've exchanged more than a few emails, then you're probably alright.
Otherwise, sign/encrypt your entire message with PGP before sending it.
- DO ensure that your server can receive mail from me. This
seems like common sense, but seems to be the biggest problem today.
You can use the SRPIG RBL
to check (but not necessarily verify) this.
Other things to keep in mind:
- DO NOT TOP-POST!
Concise explanation;
a complete explanation;
an essay.
And then there is the standard
itself.
If you like enumerated lists, this
dutch post might help you see the light.
This confuses my summarization filtes and means that
it will take longer for me to respond to your message. It also pisses me off
and makes it harder to follow a conversation.
- Use a client that uses 'In-reply-to' headers (notably Exchange Server and its clients behaves poorly), and use the 'reply' function correctly.
- Do NOT use excessively long subject lines. If the entire body of your
message is the (short) subject line, indicate so (e.g. a subject of
"Will be home at 19:00 [NT]" fits these criteria). The tag [NT] is usually used for these purposes and stands for 'No Text'. Also, with the same usage, is "<EOM>", for "End of Message".
- I strongly suggest that you do NOT send your mail from any client that advertises itself as "Outlook"
The Mozilla project's
Thunderbird (part of Netscape's suite), Eudora and
Pegasus Mail are all excellent alternatives.
I hear Opera also has an excellent client
included with their web browser.
My main email address is my first initial @ my last name under the
top level domain reserved for non-profit organizations.