EmailEtiquetteGuidelines

This page is now adopted in 3.2.4 Email Policy and Guidelines, replacing 3.2.4 Online Communication Policy

Email Policy

This email policy and guidelines explains the application of the Code of Conduct for members of the Glen Waverley Uniting Church congregation to the use of email.

The Glen Waverley Uniting Church congregation acknowledges the importance of good communication and will:

• communicate courteously, openly and honestly;
• listen with understanding;
• refrain from communicating in a discourteous, offensive, abusive, intimidating, sarcastic or patronising manner.

Email is a quick, convenient and efficient way of communicating within our congregation. None the less, we are acknowledge that not everyone uses email and need to use additional ways of communicating to ensure that all members of our congregation feel included.

Using email, we are mindful of the need to be courteous and be careful that emails are not likely to be misinterpreted or cause offence.

Email is not always a suitable replacement for face-to-face or phone call contact.

Scope

This policy applies to all members of the Glen Waverley Uniting Church congregation as well as staff members, contractors and volunteers.

Objective

To ensure that information and commentary on the Psalter wiki is responsible, respectful and lawful.

Content

1. Remember that email messages potentially last a long time, and may find their way to people other than the original recipient. If you have sensitive information to convey, perhaps email is not appropriate. Think of email as being like a postcard without an envelope. If you wouldn’t write something on a postcard, maybe you shouldn’t put it in an email.
2. It goes without saying that all email content should observe normal etiquette. Do not use insulting or obscene language, and keep emotions in check. Email does not come with body language, so it is important for users to express themselves carefully and with consideration. Humour, irony and sarcasm may not work in email correspondence. Remember that some people may take offence at material intended to be humorous.
3. Think carefully before forwarding an email if it contains information that the sender might consider personal. If in doubt, clarify with the original sender.
4. Do not write in capital letters – upper case implies shouting, and may be interpreted as bullying. Any form of bullying using email is unacceptable.
5. Be aware that lack of attention to spelling and grammar may distract readers of an email and lead to your message being poorly understood. While spelling and grammar do not matter to some email users, remember that they may matter to others.
6. Do not forward 'chain letters'. These are an insidious form of spam, and serve no purpose other than to fill up inboxes. If you must forward others' emails, you must make sure that you have the recipient's permission before doing so.
7. Try to avoid long emails generated by long sequences of exchanges. Including the previous email when replying is useful to one or two levels, but take care to remove long or out-of-date exchanges beyond the 3rd reply.
8. Avoid attachments! Many people do NOT use Microsoft products, so including Word or Excel documents as attachments is guaranteed to annoy some of your recipients. Even pdf files, which generally can be read by all recipients should be avoided. Express your message as a plain text document - it is much easier for the recipient because they can read it without having to change applications.
9. Avoid big emails. These are usually generated by attachments, so see also the previous note. Photographs and videos are a case in point. Far better to put these on a web page and include a link to them. This dramatically reduces email traffic (which remember, your recipient is paying for to download!) Your recipient then has a choice as to whether they want to download your large file. If you do not know how to add your content to a web page, get someone to show you.
10. Do not send or forward emails containing libellous, defamatory, offensive, sexist, racist or obscene remarks or images.
11. Before sending a message, re-read it to check that it is unlikely to anger or offend anyone. It is usually not possible to retrieve messages once they have been sent.

Recipients

1. Send emails only to the people you think need them. Avoid sending an email intended for a small number of people to an entire distribution list. Similarly, avoid using the ‘Reply All’ function unless your reply is relevant to all recipients.
2. Use the Carbon Copy feature (CC) sparingly. People do not have time to read material that has little immediate relevance. If the person is not required to act or respond to the information, and it does not immediately relate to them, do not copy them in.
3. When sending an email to many people use the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) field for recipients to preserve other people’s privacy by not displaying their email addresses. (Note that this is not necessary when mailing just to the mailing lists used by the church, since the members of the list are already aware of the other members and addresses on the list. However, if you do include people outside the church - for whatever reason - DO use the BCC feature instead.)

Subject

1. The Subject of an email is one of the most useful parts of an email. It allows the recipient to quickly identify what an email is about, and assign a priority to the email. It is not unusual for busy people to receive hundreds of emails a day, and having a convenient mechanism to scan the incoming list quickly is the greatest respect you can pay to that person.

2. As a rule of thumb, refrain from using the subject header as the sole contents of the email. Usually it is better to have a concise header with detail in the body of the email.
3. Make the first word of the subject a key word to the message. Within the church, using the group name in CAPITAL letters is very effective. Here are some suggestions:
   • COUNCIL: agenda papers ready for collection
   • ELDERS: discussion document attached
   • YELLOW FISH: gathering next Sunday
   • CHOIR: rehearsal moved to Room 1

4. Ensure that you have a Subject to your message!

5. If the subject changes, or refocusses upon a particular subtopic of the original mail, use a revised subject, such as:
   • YELLOW FISH: Timetable now on wiki [Was: gathering next Sunday]

Reply

1. Use Reply All with care. Make sure that your message is indeed relevant to all the people on the original mailing list. If in doubt, reply only to the author. Check that the list is indeed up-to-date - sometimes people use old lists because they use a list that is on their computer, rather than the database up-to-date version. (See MailingLists for a list of database-maintained mail lists.)

2. Always use a generic mailing list (such as [email protected] ) in preference to other forms of the list.

3. If you reply to additional people not on the author's original To or Cc list, ask the author if this is OK first.

4. For example, if a message is sent to [email protected] , you can use reply all if you want everyone on the council list to see your reply, without asking the author of the original email, since they sent the first posting to the list. But if you add any additional recipients to your reply, the original poster may not want their message seen by these additional people, so you should check with the author first.

5. If the material is sensitive, make sure your readers know that. Mark the email CONFIDENTIAL (in the Subject line) if you do not want it passed on to anyone else.

Mailing Lists

1. Several mailing lists have been set up by the church, and MUST be used in preference to any lists that are held privately. The reason for this is that mailing lists of large groups change rapidly, and using an out-of-date personal list is a sure way of a) not reaching the people you want to reach, and b) annoying those who are no longer members of the list.
2. Mailing lists with the @gwuc.org.au domain are (to be) extracted automatically from the church database, and thus will be as up-to-date as we can make them.

3. Changes to mailing lists (revised email addresses, for example) should be advised to the church database maintainers, or to the church office. The db maintainers are currently RussellGreenwood, WarrenGreenwood, MurrayLowe, DavidMorgan and JohnHurst

4. Mailing lists MUST NOT be used for any purpose other than genuine email traffic to the group in question. DO NOT use them for advertising, jokes, chain mails or the like.

JohnHurst
wikimaster, CommunicationsCommittee

CategoryCommunications