The overwhelming majority of the emails we receive are polite, informative, and a joy to read. A minute proportion are rude and abusive. Unfortunately, given the volume of emails we receive, even this tiny fraction constitutes an unpleasant burden when responding to emails. This affects us for the worse, and it hampers our work improving Texifier. For our sake, and the sake of the polite majority of our userbase, we are spelling out our abuse policy in this article.

We will never engage with an abusive email under any circumstances.

It may seem at the time of writing an email that an angry abusive message is more likely to gain our attention than a polite one, and that the angry abusive message is likely to get action more quickly than a polite one. Experience has taught us that rude messages are usually the least informative messages we receive, and without useful information we can never be of any help. Even if it were acceptable to send rude and abusive messages via email, which it is not, it never rectifies the problem faster, it just saps energy and enthusiasm for interacting with our userbase and improving Texifier. Abusive communications are in noone’s interest, not even that of the sender.

If you are receiving a link to this article, it is because you have sent an email that we consider to have crossed the line. We ask that you to rephrase it politely, and informatively, explaining how we may help you. If we receive any similar emails subsequent to the first, we will block the email address.

The following is a non exhaustive list of examples of unnaceptable content in an email to us

• Profanity of any form. There are no software difficulties that can be more accurately and concisely described with the help of a profanity.
• Personal insults towards us or our families. It seems unbelievable that this needs to be said, but it does.
• Threats of bad ratings. We understand that your experience of Texifier will shape the way you review us, but threats are threats, and they are never acceptable.

In addition to this, these are some things that we will avoid in emails to you, and we ask for you to refrain from in emails to us. Again this is non-exhaustive, if something does not help us understand the problem, and it could be antagonistic, it is best left out.

• Block capitals/italics/bold to emphasise a point. We have read every non-spam email sent to us in the past from beginning to end, and we will do so for all emails in the future.
• Rhetorical questions. As with all items on the list, rhetorical questions and other devices serve no purpose in describing a problem more clearly, the sole result is unnecessary, and counterproductive, animosity.