Quoth Quae Quack<quae@daurnimator.com>, on 2010-10-14 14:05:54 +1100:
The objection is the use of improper html emails, the disregard of
list ettiquette, and the bad grammar (especially "LUA" (its Lua, quite
a few of us are overly sensitive about this)).
Specific problems with the original message, IMHO:
- The subject line should not be in all-caps. This is possibly the
largest (accidental?) signal that says "I AM SHOUTING AT YOU; MY
GOAL IS TO GRAB YOUR ATTENTION WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT" which
is often considered hostile. You don't use a megaphone at a job
fair; don't do it here. Posting the same message twice in a row
is a similar problem; it oversteps bounds in people's attention
space.
- There was very little announcement of personal presence, and no
targeted relevance; the message looked like a bulk message coming
from nowhere. In fact I didn't see the original message at all at
first because it pegged my Bayesian spam filter into the red (0.98
classification). A paragraph indicating that you were new to the
list but thought the job posting might be of relevance would have
done wonders for the reception (at least from me). A paragraph
about the role of Lua specifically in your work environment on top
of that would have been even better.
- HTML mail is not recommended on this list, including inside a
multipart/alternative. There's a 27 kB "signature" attachment
which is completely superfluous, too. Don't do this.
- "Lua" should not be spelled in all-caps.
Note that many people make this mistake with "Perl" as well,
though it's a little bit more excusable there because the name has
nominal initialisms associated with it. The fact that "Perl" was
spelled correctly here but "Lua" was not does not look good when
you're posting to the Lua list.
You should have seen any number of instances of the spelling on
the website on your way to the list. Having apparently ignored
this is indicative of non-investment in list quality, which is
minus points to whether people will read your message.
Probably none of these are immediately fatal in isolation (maybe the
first), but in combination it makes a very poor first impression.
---> Drake Wilson
