Fourteen ways in which you can avoid starting a flame war on a Debian mailing list

On an IRC brainstorming on what talk I should give at FOSDEM, liw suggested:

"Fourteen ways in which you can avoid starting a flame war on a Debian mailing list".

In the end I went for something more technical, but I've never stopped thinking about liw's challenge.

I ended up writing talk notes about such a potential talk.

Here they are.

The classics

• Unsubscribe
• Killfile
• Ignore

The radicals

• Configure mail server to drop all incoming mail
• Configure mail server to drop all outgoing mail
• Pipe all incoming mail bodies through chef before delivery
• Pipe all incoming mail bodies through dadadodo before delivery
• Replace all incoming mail bodies with polygen-generated messages before delivery

The radicals, applied selectively

• Configure mail server to drop all incoming mail from people you don'tlike
• Configure mail server to drop all outgoing mail from people you don't like
• Pipe all mail from people you don't like through chef before delivery
• Pipe all mail from people you don't like through dadadodo before delivery
• Replace all incoming mail from people you don't like with polygen-generated messages before delivery

The From tricks

• Hack mutt's display to swap From names randomly
• Hack mutt's display to use polygen to replace all From names with randomly generated ones
• Hack mutt's display to replace all From names with "Vorlon"
• Hack mutt's display to hide all sender names

The naggers

• Hack mutt to disallow replying to a mail for 30 minutes after it gets read for the first time
• Hack vim to tell workrave to interrupt hard and often when you are editing mail replies

The conscience ticklers

• Reread the last 5 mails in your sent-mail folder before replying
• Google search old mails of yours before replying
• Consider what Joey Hess would think of you if he ever read your mail

The subtle

• Write in your TODO list that you definitely need to reply to that mail

The subtle, 1 week later

• Write a TODO-list application to keep track of all that mail you definitely need to reply to