[NTLK] off topic messages and reply policies brush-up [..looOOong...]

From: doppler (doppler_at_mac.com)
Date: Wed Jan 02 2002 - 11:27:30 EST


happy new year, list!

id like to ask all of you a favour, in order to make our daily life easier.

as we all know, the list has always been heavily populated and used/misused
not only to discuss newton matters. with a list counting well over 1000
recipients, its easy to end up receiving about 100 messages per day. if you
are away for a week or so, it could completely drown your inbox. the reading
of hundreds of new mails every week is very time-consuming and tedious, if a
large part of them are little related to the topic.

***my own, subjective estimate - less than 1/2 of all posts are relevant***

what is even worse, is that, in my case i tend to delete msgs randomly when
to many pile up in my "newton folder". this way, i refuse myself interesting
news and duscussions sometimes. i believe many other ppl suffer from the
same plague. it is not fun to discover you have deleted useful information!

last, but not least, i never use my newt to read the newtontalk list. i dont
want to download tons of mail to the newton. communication on a PDA must be
efficient and fast. i often use cellular connection, which means it is hard
to defend the cost for downloading mails that you will not read. with
9600bps, it is actually quite expensive too!

---

in order to change this saddening situation i propose a couple of changes:

1. list maestros, please change the reply address so that it equals the original sender, instead of todays <newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net>. this would save a whole lot of personal letters to slip out in public. i use other lists that have nearly as many users, but they dont get flooded that often, thanks to this policy. (what would be avoided qite easily then, is the so common replies to "FS" msgs, completely irrellevan to everyone except for the two people involved in the deal.)

2. list members, please use the FAQ <http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/>

3. list members, please use subject lines more active than today. many times one can see mails that have spun off from its original thread. this is a bit sad, when you expect to open a certain mail that turns out to contain something completely different from what was stated in the subject line. often, useful information is deleted because of this.

4. list maestros AND list members, please do not hesitate to moderate the list more actively in those matters. i know it is a weired request to involve the list members also, since list maestros are the only one that should moderate, but in this case, i believe it is good if we all do what we can to diminish the heavy mail burden of today.

thank you, all - let a fitter list be our new year promise!

roman pixell

_________karmatic_experience_group__

mailto: roman_at_karmatic.com phone: +46 (0) 8 242 606 fax: +46 (0) 8 598 14 954 cell: +46 (0) 709 10 35 51 web: www.pixell.net/doppler icq user number: 3698764 ____________________________________

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