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Number of posts in this thread: 7 (In chronological order)

From: Jared Smith
Date: Tue, Apr 17 2012 10:50AM
Subject: WebAIM List Update, Etiquette, and Contest
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WebAIM List Subscribers-

The WebAIM Discussion List has been active for 12 and a half years now
and is quickly approaching our 20,000th message. We estimate that
close to 18 million distinct e-mails have been distributed on the
list. When the list first started in 1999, WebAIM staff were simply
e-mailing each other, sometimes forcing conversations to try and
invite participation. We're thrilled with the success of this list
over the years. Someone has described it as the office water cooler of
web accessibility - a great place to hang out and chat about something
we're all passionate about.

To celebrate the success of the list, we thought we'd throw a little
contest. We've picked a number near 20,000. The subscriber that posts
the message coinciding with that number will win a WAVE T-shirt and
some other fine prizes. Please don't post unnecessarily in hope of
winning. The winning post will likely be sent in the next month or so.


We also take this opportunity to remind you of some mailing list best
practices. The online list archives are available online at
http://webaim.org/discussion/archives This is a valuable resources
that gets 10s of thousands of views each year. To keep the list and
archives usable, we kindly ask you to:

- Trim messages to only the relevant portion of the conversation you
are replying to. If there's any question, simply delete all previous
messages from your response. Most modern e-mail clients provide
threading that make it easy for users to get previous content without
it being repeated in every message. We recommend bottom posting (your
response would appear below the trimmed, quoted portion of the
previous message) or inline posting, rather than top posting (your
message appears at the top of the entire quoted messages you're
replying to).

- Keep Subject lines descriptive and succinct, just as you would web
page titles. If replying to a message, reply directly to that message
without modifying the Subject line. This keeps the mail thread in
tact. However, if you are a list digest subscriber, please modify the
subject line to be "Re: " and then the exact Subject of the message
you are replying to.

- Make sure your vacation auto-responders are NOT set to send to the
list. If you cannot customize this, please ensure that the word
"vacation" or "out of the office" appears in the Subject line and the
list will filter them out.

- Keep message signatures to a minimum. Your full page e-mail legal
disclaimer and confidentiality notice carries no legal weight anyway,
so please don't include it on list messages.

- Avoid attachments. The list allows them up to 100KB, but only send
them if necessary. Ensure any attachments are in an accessible and
readily supported format. Attachments will not appear in the list
archives.


Thank you all for your participation. We're looking forward to the
next 20,000 messages.

WebAIM Staff

From: Rakesh
Date: Tue, Apr 17 2012 11:00AM
Subject: Re: WebAIM List Update, Etiquette, and Contest
← Previous message | Next message →

Really a great news Jared. Thank you Web AIM for providing such great
platform to discuss many important accessibility issues. Also I would
like to thank each member of the list for providing valuable suggestions
and guidance when ever required.
Thanks & Regards
Rakesh



On 4/17/2012 10:20 PM, Jared Smith wrote:
> WebAIM List Subscribers-
>
> The WebAIM Discussion List has been active for 12 and a half years now
> and is quickly approaching our 20,000th message. We estimate that
> close to 18 million distinct e-mails have been distributed on the
> list. When the list first started in 1999, WebAIM staff were simply
> e-mailing each other, sometimes forcing conversations to try and
> invite participation. We're thrilled with the success of this list
> over the years. Someone has described it as the office water cooler of
> web accessibility - a great place to hang out and chat about something
> we're all passionate about.
>
> To celebrate the success of the list, we thought we'd throw a little
> contest. We've picked a number near 20,000. The subscriber that posts
> the message coinciding with that number will win a WAVE T-shirt and
> some other fine prizes. Please don't post unnecessarily in hope of
> winning. The winning post will likely be sent in the next month or so.
>
>
> We also take this opportunity to remind you of some mailing list best
> practices. The online list archives are available online at
> http://webaim.org/discussion/archives This is a valuable resources
> that gets 10s of thousands of views each year. To keep the list and
> archives usable, we kindly ask you to:
>
> - Trim messages to only the relevant portion of the conversation you
> are replying to. If there's any question, simply delete all previous
> messages from your response. Most modern e-mail clients provide
> threading that make it easy for users to get previous content without
> it being repeated in every message. We recommend bottom posting (your
> response would appear below the trimmed, quoted portion of the
> previous message) or inline posting, rather than top posting (your
> message appears at the top of the entire quoted messages you're
> replying to).
>
> - Keep Subject lines descriptive and succinct, just as you would web
> page titles. If replying to a message, reply directly to that message
> without modifying the Subject line. This keeps the mail thread in
> tact. However, if you are a list digest subscriber, please modify the
> subject line to be "Re: " and then the exact Subject of the message
> you are replying to.
>
> - Make sure your vacation auto-responders are NOT set to send to the
> list. If you cannot customize this, please ensure that the word
> "vacation" or "out of the office" appears in the Subject line and the
> list will filter them out.
>
> - Keep message signatures to a minimum. Your full page e-mail legal
> disclaimer and confidentiality notice carries no legal weight anyway,
> so please don't include it on list messages.
>
> - Avoid attachments. The list allows them up to 100KB, but only send
> them if necessary. Ensure any attachments are in an accessible and
> readily supported format. Attachments will not appear in the list
> archives.
>
>
> Thank you all for your participation. We're looking forward to the
> next 20,000 messages.
>
> WebAIM Staff
> > >

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Tue, Apr 17 2012 12:58PM
Subject: Re: WebAIM List Update, Etiquette, and Contest
← Previous message | Next message →

I must protest one of these recommendations it is a reel pain in the ... to read bottom posts I know you like it and many sited people like them to but really turn off your screen and try and find the new from the old it's not easy and it's not friendly at all. Ban me if you must but bottom posting makes it harder for a screen reader user and don't tell me to turn on my punctuation as that is to verbose.

Lucy Greco
Assistive Technology Specialist
Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
(510) 643-7591
http://attlc.berkeley.edu
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu

From: Barry Hill
Date: Tue, Apr 17 2012 1:04PM
Subject: Re: WebAIM List Update, Etiquette, and Contest
← Previous message | Next message →

Got to agree with Lucy here. I'm a screenreader user and I've been really
struggling with who said what in some messages.

Cheers

Barry

From: Jared Smith
Date: Tue, Apr 17 2012 1:25PM
Subject: Re: WebAIM List Update, Etiquette, and Contest
← Previous message | Next message →

Lucy-

If you are responding to a message, the best solution is to simply
clear out the entirety of the message you are responding to before
adding your response, as I have done in this message. This is
accessible to everyone. However, if you are responding to only a
portion of a previous message, posting your response to the bottom is
by far the best way to make it clear to everyone what you are actually
responding to. If the quoted message is trimmed and kept to only the
relevant text you are responding to, this is easily accessible and
understandable.

If you do not like bottom posting, this is fine, but please do not top
post as you did in your message. This simply regurgitates the previous
messages over and over again in the archives and the list digest,
making them very difficult and inaccessible to everyone.

As an example, check out this recent message from the archives -
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_message?id 075 It is a 2 sentence,
top-posted response that then quotes 28 previous messages - over 350
lines and 13,000 characters of unnecessarily repeated content. If you
try to read the entire thread -
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadR59 - it's over 4000
lines and 210,000 characters of repeated content. This, by the way, is
exactly what list digest readers have to sort through. If properly
trimmed, the thread would have been a few hundred lines of easily
consumable and accessible content.

Jared

From: Andrews, David B (DEED)
Date: Tue, Apr 17 2012 1:36PM
Subject: Re: WebAIM List Update, Etiquette, and Contest
← Previous message | Next message →

Jared:


If you do not like bottom posting, this is fine, but please do not top post as you did in your message. This simply regurgitates the previous messages over and over again in the archives and the list digest, making them very difficult and inaccessible to everyone.

As an example, check out this recent message from the archives -
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_message?id 075 It is a 2 sentence, top-posted response that then quotes 28 previous messages - over 350 lines and 13,000 characters of unnecessarily repeated content. If you try to read the entire thread -
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadR59 - it's over 4000 lines and 210,000 characters of repeated content. This, by the way, is exactly what list digest readers have to sort through. If properly trimmed, the thread would have been a few hundred lines of easily consumable and accessible content.


What you say is true, but will only take place in an ideal world. As someone who runs about 200 lists, I will say that whether they top post, bottom post, or whatever, most people do not trim messages properly.

This dialog clearly demonstrates one problem in accessibility. What best serves one group may in fact be a problem, or at least an inconvenience for another.

There is no simple or perfect answer here. As a blind person, my ideal is top posting with good trimming, and as a sighted person yours is probably bottom posting with good trimming.

Dave

From: Jeevan Reddy
Date: Sun, Apr 22 2012 8:55AM
Subject: Re: WebAIM List Update, Etiquette, and Contest
← Previous message | No next message

Thank you Jared and WEBAIM community for providing a fantastic
platform to discuss accessibility related stuff....
it's been awesome to get to know that our 20,000th message is going to
be delivered. CONGRATULATIONS...

On 4/17/12, Rakesh < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Really a great news Jared. Thank you Web AIM for providing such great
> platform to discuss many important accessibility issues. Also I would
> like to thank each member of the list for providing valuable suggestions
> and guidance when ever required.
> Thanks & Regards
> Rakesh
>
>
>
> On 4/17/2012 10:20 PM, Jared Smith wrote:
>> WebAIM List Subscribers-
>>
>> The WebAIM Discussion List has been active for 12 and a half years now
>> and is quickly approaching our 20,000th message. We estimate that
>> close to 18 million distinct e-mails have been distributed on the
>> list. When the list first started in 1999, WebAIM staff were simply
>> e-mailing each other, sometimes forcing conversations to try and
>> invite participation. We're thrilled with the success of this list
>> over the years. Someone has described it as the office water cooler of
>> web accessibility - a great place to hang out and chat about something
>> we're all passionate about.
>>
>> To celebrate the success of the list, we thought we'd throw a little
>> contest. We've picked a number near 20,000. The subscriber that posts
>> the message coinciding with that number will win a WAVE T-shirt and
>> some other fine prizes. Please don't post unnecessarily in hope of
>> winning. The winning post will likely be sent in the next month or so.
>>
>>
>> We also take this opportunity to remind you of some mailing list best
>> practices. The online list archives are available online at
>> http://webaim.org/discussion/archives This is a valuable resources
>> that gets 10s of thousands of views each year. To keep the list and
>> archives usable, we kindly ask you to:
>>
>> - Trim messages to only the relevant portion of the conversation you
>> are replying to. If there's any question, simply delete all previous
>> messages from your response. Most modern e-mail clients provide
>> threading that make it easy for users to get previous content without
>> it being repeated in every message. We recommend bottom posting (your
>> response would appear below the trimmed, quoted portion of the
>> previous message) or inline posting, rather than top posting (your
>> message appears at the top of the entire quoted messages you're
>> replying to).
>>
>> - Keep Subject lines descriptive and succinct, just as you would web
>> page titles. If replying to a message, reply directly to that message
>> without modifying the Subject line. This keeps the mail thread in
>> tact. However, if you are a list digest subscriber, please modify the
>> subject line to be "Re: " and then the exact Subject of the message
>> you are replying to.
>>
>> - Make sure your vacation auto-responders are NOT set to send to the
>> list. If you cannot customize this, please ensure that the word
>> "vacation" or "out of the office" appears in the Subject line and the
>> list will filter them out.
>>
>> - Keep message signatures to a minimum. Your full page e-mail legal
>> disclaimer and confidentiality notice carries no legal weight anyway,
>> so please don't include it on list messages.
>>
>> - Avoid attachments. The list allows them up to 100KB, but only send
>> them if necessary. Ensure any attachments are in an accessible and
>> readily supported format. Attachments will not appear in the list
>> archives.
>>
>>
>> Thank you all for your participation. We're looking forward to the
>> next 20,000 messages.
>>
>> WebAIM Staff
>> >> >> >
> > > >


--
Best Regards,
*Jeevan Reddy,
Accessibility Developer,
Onya Digital Solutions Pvt Ltd,
Bangalore, India.
*