HiEv's Replying and Posting Guidelines

OK, so what are the rules for replying to messages? Well, I wouldn't say that there are many rules, but there certainly are a few guidelines you should follow, so here they are:

1) Don't toppost. In other words don't post your reply above the quoted text, instead try to interleave your replies within the quoted material.
2) Snip when possible. If you're not commenting on something you're quoting you should remove it. Putting a "[snip]" marker or something like it in place of the deleted section is also nice.
3) Don't quote sigs. Unless you are commenting on someone's signature you shouldn't quote it. This is really an addendum to #2.
4) Watch your line wrapping. You should try to keep the outgoing text wrapped at 72 to 76 characters. Also make sure to fix any badly wrapped quoted material (this is especially a problem for Outlook Express users, who should probably use OE-QuoteFix to fix the problem.)
5) Keep attributions. Make sure that if you are quoting people that you keep their names marked properly for each level of quoting.
6) Reply directly. If you have a response you want to write to a particular message don't reply to a quote of the message, reply to the original message.
7) Use proper quote marking. Any quoted text should have one quote marker ("> ", ": ", and "| " are the most common) per level of quoted material at the beginning of each quoted line. If you break up a line to respond in the middle, put a new quote marker at the beginning of the new line.
8) Read the whole thread first. If you reply to a message with information that has already been given, or worse yet, already been shown to have been wrong, you will end up looking redundant or foolish.
9) Let old threads die. If you see a post that is more than two or three weeks old you may not want to reply to it if you don't have something really important to say because the original message will have fallen off many other people's servers by that point. When that happens all they see is a new thread that starts with a reply.
10) Don't rename the Subject line. If you change the Subject line of the message Google Groups and some newsreaders will show the message as a new thread. This makes following the thread somewhat difficult.
11) Keep it easy to read. Put a blank line between each quoted section and your reply. Also, don't use 20 solid lines of text to respond; paragraphs are your friend.
12) Quote something. If you don't quote the previous post at all it may make it hard to follow what you're talking about. You shouldn't force people to reread other posts to understand what you wrote.
13) Be careful with quote markers. Don't put the quote markers in front of new text you are writing. You shouldn't make your new text look like it is quoted material written by someone else when it isn't. This is really an addendum to #7.

So those are the guidelines for replies. What about the general posting guidelines? Well, that includes all the above plus:

1) NEVER post using HTML. This means NEVER EVER POST USING HTML! Got it?
2) Use a proper sig. Try to keep your sig at four lines or less and have a proper sigdash ("-- ") just before it.
3) Try to use proper English. Avoid using "1337" or "I r 2 stoopid" styles except for satire. If you don't speak English there are usually other groups for those languages. Please try to follow the standard rules of capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar.
4) Don't shout. Posting in all caps will only get you ignored... at best.
5) No spam. Do not post a message just to include a link that points to a company or site that you are affiliated with unless it is VERY relevant. Avoid hyping it if at all possible.
6) Don't ask for illegal crap. We've seen a million messages asking for cracks, attacks, and other illegal things and we are sick of it. And before you ask, no, you aren't a special case.
7) Don't ask for easily Googled items. A large part of hacking is doing research, so don't be lazy and you won't get flamed.
8) Don't feed the trolls. If someone posts something(s) just to pick a fight try not to reply to them more than once.
9) Don't ask for a mentor. Hackers almost never do it, especially not for total strangers. If you're really a hacker you can teach yourself.
10) Never attach a binary file. This is a non-binary group, binary files should not be posted here.
11) Crossposts are to be avoided. Crossposting between related groups should be done only when necessary, it should never be done between unrelated groups. Anytime crossposts are changed or followups are set you should note it in your post.
12) Contain flame wars. The occasional flame war is fine, just don't let it get out of control and start flaming your target every time he posts, no matter what he posts. That's just ignorant and will get you PLONKed.
13) Don't feed the crackbeggars. If someone asks for a crack (or something like that) and you give it to him you'll just be encouraging him and others to keep asking here. That's not a reputation we'd like to gain.
14) This isn't alt.test. Don't do test posts here. There are reasons why there are groups like alt.test, alt.testing, etc..
15) Link to articles. Please don't quote verbatim an entire article, especially if it is copyrighted, when you could simply post a link and/or an excerpt. Make sure you also say what a link is when you post it so you don't waste anyone's time.
16) Use a descriptive subject. This means that you should use a subject line that summarizes the content of the post in some way. This makes it much easier to go back and find the thread later on if that is necessary.
17) Avoid profanity. Sure, occasionally it's fun, but try to avoid it. Being clever is far more entertaining than being crass.
18) Use a reasonable name. Names that are 47 characters long or only one symbol are really annoying. Also, make sure you aren't stealing someone's nick.
19) Don't ask for an email reply. Unless you are a regular don't bother asking for an email reply. If you post to the newsgroup you should expect your reply to be in the newsgroup as well.
20) Write more than just a subject. In other words, don't be too lazy to write something in the body of the post.

and the final and most important item:

21) Try to be helpful. Remember, we're not just here to flame the lusers, we're here to help each other and anyone else that posts good questions.

I think that pretty much covers it, but the guidelines are somewhat flexible, so there are situations where some of the above can be ignored without annoying anyone.

Also, for a great general description of how to ask hackers questions please read this:
http://www.security-forums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=249

You might also want to check out these links for more about quoting:
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html
http://mailformat.dan.info/quoting/top-posting.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html

While you're at it you can read the alt.hacker FAQ at any of these links:
http://www.alt-hacker.org/
http://althacker.cjb.net/faq/
http://members.tripod.com/wesleybarrett/althacker_faq.htm
http://www.stormpages.com/sekel/FAQ.txt (text only version)
http://7eggert.dyndns.org/~7eggert/ahfaq.txt (text only version)
http://homepage.mac.com/desavant/me/ahfaq_rev7.pdf (PDF version)

(Last updated on January 5, 2004)