Do's and Don'ts of E-mail

Below is a list of guidelines to use when sending email. You may also want to read other netiquette guides available on the Internet.

• Conserve your account space. All mail that you send counts against your allotted account space until it is read by the receiver. Sending the same message to more than one person counts the entire message against your account for every person you send it to. Sending one message to four people uses four times as much space as a single copy. Also, sending unnecessarily long messages or unnecessarily duplicating messages can eat into your account space and slow down the student server.

• Blocked file extensions. Any email, either outgoing or incoming that contains any of the following file extensions will be stripped out by the MIMEDefang filter system. ade,adp,app,asd,asf,asx,bas,bat,chm,cmd,com,cpl,crt,dll,exe,fxp,hlp,hta,hto,inf,ini,ins,isp,jse?,lib,lnk,mdb,mde,msc, msi,msp,mst,ocx,pcd,pif,prg,reg,scr,sct,sh,shb,shs,sys,url,vb,vbe,vbs,vcs,vxd,wmd,wms,wmz,wsc,wsf,wsh,zip.

• Check before you mail. You should always double check what you have written. Sometimes this double checking can save you some real embarrassment.

• Don't use mail for commercial purposes.If you have a bed or refrigerator for sale contact the Statesman or the local paper. Don't send mail for businesses, neither your own nor someone else's.

• Direct your message to the right people. If you have a question about a Business class, don't send mail to all the faculty in the School of Business. Try to narrow it down to the correct person for the question. Keep in mind that unread messages count against your disk quota! Also, if someone takes a year off and you send them mail it might count against your space until they return and read it.

• Stay out of Flames. Electronic mail arguments (sometimes referred to as "Flames") are a dime a dozen. Most start innocently enough and some are intentional. If you find yourself in a flame with someone, or a group of people, just stop. It is too easy to dash off a memo in anger. Remember-- once it is sent, you can't get it back.

• Don't start flames. Mail flames get started for all kinds of reasons, but many are accidental. Be careful what you write. Sarcasm is not always clear in a mail message and something you meant to be funny can be taken very seriously.

• Don't use mail to harass people. Harassment is difficult to define, but common sense should tell you not to send anything that the person receiving the mail might find offensive, sexually harassing, bigoted, or in bad taste. If someone asks you not to write to them, then by all means stop.

• Never join in on a chain letter. Regardless of its content, chain letters are considered a waste of network resources. You should not join in a chain letter or forward it to anyone else. For more information, review the Electronic Chain Letter Policy.

• Keep mail private. If someone sends you a mail message it is probably meant for your eyes only. Don't forward it without the author's permission.

• If you don't want it shared, then don't write it. Unfortunately, not everyone follows the rule "keep mail private." If you have something private to say, do it in person. It is possible that your love letter could end up on a world-wide mailing list!

• Remember that you can be found. When you use the e-mail system you are using a private account that you are responsible for. Just because you're here, and the person you sent mail to is in Japan, doesn't mean there are no consequences. Your mail and your actions on the network are traceable.

• Don't send threatening mail. There are high ranking executives and government officials with electronic mail addresses. E-mail can even be sent to the White house. Jokes and threats sent to these people are taken seriously. Depending on the person you send mail, you could find yourself behind bars.

• Clean your mailbox. Old mail lying around in your mailbox is a waste of storage space. You need to delete messages as soon as they are no longer needed.