Blog maintenance

I should probably upkeep my blog because:
- many links and media seem broken
- shbrush syntax highlighter stopped working updated to highlight.js served from cdn
- many unpublished drafts

Chan vs. Sama

The way one addresses others is very much culture dependant. This can range from the extremely formal Japanese expressions in the domain of "chan" (dear little) to "sama" (most honorable), to less formal languages as English where addressing is somehow less strict - although British subjects don't use "Dear Queenie/Hi Lizzie" nor Japanese start a letter with "Naruhito-chan".

So what are the limits of politeness/familiarity on LinkedIn? How does one starts an invitation to an unknown person? What about a letter to a known one?
I am not a native English speaker so most of the formal English knowledge I have comes from books, but so are many other people that use English for business purposes.
I have learnt that every language has several functional styles that are used in diverse situations - science, law, newspapers, literature, business. In my own view LinkedIn is a business environment where business partners meet. They can meet for the first time or they might know each other for long, but still they are in a business environment.

The first action inside the network is the invite. How would you invite another person to join your network? Do you know him/her in person? Does he/she knows you? It's a pity that LinkedIn permits empty invitation messages because they reduce the empathy levels between those who want to connect.Very seldom people bother to write personalised invitation messages and explain their goal for connecting. This is especially true for some headhunters who expect automatic acceptance of their empty invites. On the other hand there are people who write something in their invite messages. This can range from very formal "Dear Sir/Madam" to the "Dear Robert". This is very much country/industry dependent but as a rule it's better to be more formal when you don't know the person you are talking to.
In the meanwhile there are over-friendly invites - I for one received "Querido Danielito" and "Dragă Dani" from persons I have never met. Are those okay? I would hardly think so. There are many LinkedIn etiquette related posts online and most of them are common sense rules that help one find appropriate tone and style. As an exercise of imagination - how would Lincoln start the famous "Bixby Letter"? With "Dear Madam" or "Hi Lydia".

Indeed some things changed but some of them not so much and although globalisation relaxed the norms it is still okay to use a business-casual style on written documents. I am coming from a cultural background where people address each-other on their given name only after some mutual agreement (see the last paragraph of this article).

I am not absurd and I understand that "Hi/Dear Daniel" is acceptable but from there to "Dani" (which is not by the way a short name that I use) it's quite a lot of way to go.

 So, culturally speaking, it is better to do a small research before starting a letter and choose the apropriate tone, style and expressions. Because: "Utlänning - Främling - Ramen - Varelse"