Tips to belong to a mailing list without a major headache
When you subscribe to a mailing list it's obvious that you do so because you are interested in some particular topic. That's your interest. Unfortunately, at the same time you have to deal with the idiosyncrasies of your computer (both hardware and software) and the Internet, an intimidating pair for many people. The sad result many times is that you unsubscribe to that mailing list (I cannot cope with that flood of e-mails!) or pay it less attention that you intended initially.
I dealt with the same situation initially, and in my way, found some tips and tricks that helped me alleviate the situation.
I am presently subscribed to the EPIL-K9 mailing list, a mailing list devoted to the discussion of Canine Epilepsy (yes, in case that you didn't know, dogs can have Epilepsy). The list is composed by owners, breeders and veterinarians. When I first came to the list, I was desperately looking for knowledge and advice. I certainly received plenty of both. This is my little way to pay back and say Thanks.
Table of Contents
Filters for a generic mail program
Minimum netiquette rules (What!? What's netiquette?)
Setting the Time, Date and Time Zone of your computer under Windows 95
You have just subscribed to the mailing list you want, and for the first time you are going to receive it. Then, a couple of dozens of e-mails arrive to your place. A few of them are from your relatives, a few from some friends, a few from some clients or coworkers and a lot from the mailing list. You have to read them all to be sure you are not missing something important.
The next day is the same, and the next. After one week, you have lost track of what came from where and from whom. You tried to organize it by hand, either deleting or moving the mail around, but that takes tons of time.
The problem is you are receiving all your incoming mail in the same place. I can hear you saying: I don't want to buy another computer! I don't want to open another e-mail account! Or, for that matter, one for each of my activities! The fact is that it is not necessary. With only one e-mail account, you can have all the PO Boxes that you want.
What!? Say that again!
You can have all the PO ... Ooops, I think i already said that. Ok, ok, let's go to the point: You can instruct your email program to automatically put each incoming mail in a different PO Box on a base of: Where is it coming from, Who sent it, What is it about, What's its subject and other criteria. In this way, you can have one PO Box for your relatives, one for your friends, one for work related issues and one for those hundreds of pieces of mail coming from the mailing list.
From now on, I am going to call the PO Boxes, Folders, and concentrate only on how to separate the emails from a mailing list from the others (I'll leave to the student as an exercise the "How to manage the relatives, friends, work and other categories e-mails).
You instruct your e-mail program to act as a polite and diligent postman by setting some rules. These rules are called in the Computer World Lingo: "Filters", and this is how we are going to refer to them from now on.
Filters for a generic mail program
You will find here a tutorial about how to set filters for the mailer that comes with Netscape 4.0 (better known as Netscape Communicator). I am not saying that it's the best one (and i have to clarify that i have no relation with Netscape). It's just the one that I use and it's good enough for me. If you are using another program not yet covered, read this.
In case you are using a mailer without a tutorial (yet!), here are some basic directives.
Most modern e-mail programs (and modern means from 1995 on) have some way to make folders and set filters. The problem is each one has his own way, and moreover, not all of them call Folders for folders or Filters for filters. It will be up to you to see what naming convention your e-mail program follows. Like always, there is no substitute for reading the manuals and the Help provided with any program. In case of doubt, send an e-mail to the Company that wrote your program.
Basically, the steps to follow are two (sorry if they are too ample):
You have to create a new folder for your mailing list (look for "New Folder", "New Directory", or something resembling those under the main menus of your program)
You have to set the rules that the mailer should follow (look for "Mail filters", "Folder Properties", or something resembling those under the main menus of your program)
If you can't figure out yet how to do it, it would be a good idea to see how is it done under Netscape, after all, e-mail programs are not all that different
Filters for Netscape 4.0 e-mail program + Windows 95
Filters for other mail programs
In case you are using a program that isn't covered, and would really like to see a tutorial for it, send me an email here saying: What program are you using (name and version) and what operating system (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Linux or another Unix variant). I haven't yet decided the number, but if enough people ask for a tutorial on the last version of Eudora for example, I'll make it.
Or, better yet, Any volunteers out there? Come on guys, it's only a couple of hours of your time! Some screenshots, some comments and Voila!. If you do so, e-mail me and i will include that tutorial here (if you prefer I will include a link to your page).
This is the good old "unsolicited advices" place. Like with any advice you will receive in your life, this thing works fine for me, they might work for you, but that's not mandatory. I have to remark: This is not the good way (like if there is only one!). This is my way. If you like it, good! if not, keep your own, it's the best for you.
Most Mailing Lists gives you two ways to receive the posts. The "No Digest" way and the "Digest" way. With the first one (the No Digest) you receive each individual post made (and hence, have to deal with a couple of dozen e-mails a day). With the second (the Digest) a package is made with all the posts within a time period (usually one day) and is sent to you at the end of that period. The default way is usually the "No Digest", but most certainly, you can change that to the "Digest" at any time that you want. The way to do that is usually fully covered in the "Help" file you received when you subscribed the list (in case you didn't keep it, read this, don't forget to come back). For the EPIL-K9 people, the way to change from "No Digest" to "Digest" is:
Send an e-mail to LISTSERV@APPLE.EASE.LSOFT.COM leaving the subject line blank with the text:
SET EPIL-K9 DIGESTS
in the body.
If you want to set the No Digest form again, the command to send is:
SET EPIL-K9 NODIGESTS
Now my opinion: What's the best way.
The only advantage of the Digest form is that you receive only one e-mail a day. That's all. Contrary to popular belief, the amount of disk space you save is negligible (less than a kilobyte for each e-mail: the routing data. For more information read this). On the other hand it has a lot of disadvantages:
It makes it almost impossible to follow a thread.
It makes it impossible to group the postings by author or topic.
It makes it difficult to see at a quick glance what was posted. You cannot point and click on a particular message. You have to read or search the whole digest.
You will have to rely on your memory exclusively all the time. So, somebody posted something in the past that you want to reread. When was it? Was it the 5 of December or January? Of course, you can rely on the searching capabilities of your program, but that will bring a ton of answers that you are not looking for.
You cannot automatically reply to a post. You have to cut and paste the subject, the body, add the pertinent "<<" and "" to those parts you are replying to, and generally speaking, waste a lot of time.
Conclusion: Do not Digest! The only advantage you gets can be easily solved using filters (see the chapter on The Trick: e-mail Filters).
Most people, when receiving a lot of mail, delete those that the person thinks are not interesting enough or are "old". They do so to avoid cluttering his e-mail folder. They don't want thousands of old uninteresting e-mails from the mailing list lying there and hiding the real important ones. They also delete a lot of those e-mails thinking they are saving precious disk space.
I can understand the first reason, but that confusing mess of e-mails can be avoided by using the appropriate filters (see the chapter on The Trick: e-mail Filters).
I think it's time to demystify the second reason. I have been subscribed to the EPIL-K9 mailing list for more than five months. In that time i received over four thousand e-mails from the list (and i kept them all). The total amount of disk space occupied by them is a little over 14 megabytes. Lets suppose I have an old computer with a 300 megabytes disk (and that means old, you will have a tough time to find any computer today with less than 2000 megabytes). A little arithmetic shows that all the e-mails from the mailing list for over 5 months occupies less than 5 % of the space in my antique disk. It would take me more than three years to reach the 30 % mark, and i think that by that time i should have updated my computer. In a modern computer that percentage will be in the order of less than 1 % (and it will take 30 years to reach the 30% mark!).
I can see some of you nodding your heads and saying: No, that's wrong. For those, please read the techie note below. If you are not comfortable with some technical aspects of how the e-mails are saved in your disk, just skip it, it's not that important.
Conclusion: There is no need at all to delete any of the e-mails from a mailing list. If you keep them, they could prove to be a valuable resource for the future. Something you are not interested today could become extremely important tomorrow, and may be tomorrow, if you post a question answered in the past, some of the people that answered it already are not going to be around, are not going to answer the same question again or, simply they choose not to read your question that particular day.
Ancient e-mail programs (over 8 years old or more) used to save each received e-mail in an individual file. Because there is always (no matter what operating system) a minimum amount of space allocated for each file (a cluster), that resulted in a lot of waste. A one byte file occupies at least that minimum amount. Four thousand files (like my example above) with only 14 Mb of real data would waste between 8 Mb (with a cluster size of 4 Kb and a medium waste of half that, 2 Kb for each file) and 128 Mb (with a cluster size of 64 Kb and a medium waste of half that, 32 Kb for each file). In those days, hard disks came only in tens of Mb tastes, so the situation was intolerable, hence the necessity to delete everything not immediately necessary
Most modern e-mail programs groups the e-mails in a single file, so there is no waste at all for the allocation of space in the disk.
Final note for those that will still delete e-mails (for security or their own reasons): When you "delete" an e-mail, what's really happening is that your mailer program "marks" it as "deleted". It doesn't really eliminates it physically from your disk. You cannot see it, but it's still there, occupying space. To really recover that space what you have to do periodically is to "Compress" or "Purge" (the term to use depends on the e-mail program you use) your e-mail folders. Only at that time those "deleted" e-mails disappear from your disk. If you are still deleting e-mails for security reasons , be careful. Unless you purge daily your folders, any person skilled enough can recover them easily.
Ordering and searching your mail
If you are like me or followed my advice on Don't delete! you will soon find yourself in a situation where you are looking at over thousands of e-mails. How can you better take advantage of them? When you are looking for something you might be tempted to think it's like finding a needle in a haystack. Here is where your Computer and mail program comes to the rescue. All e-mail programs comes with options for ordering your e-mails in a particular order. That order could be for example, by date (the default, so you can always see immediately the last incoming mail), by sender, by subject, and by thread, (these are the main ones). It's up to your imagination how to take advantage of this. For example, in the EPIL-K9 mailing list there is a person who knows a lot about Alternative Treatments for Canine Epilepsy (people from EPIL-K9 know who am i talking about :-). If I want to know something about Acupuncture I will first order the mail so that all the posts from that person are grouped together. Then I will look for the word "Acupuncture" in the subjects of those e-mails or read them all. This will take me a couple of clicks of the mouse only.
For those using a mailer under Windows 95 or Windows NT, there is kind of an understanding that clicking on the title of a column, that list will get ordered by that column in ascending order. If you click again in the same title, you will get reverse order. Go ahead, give it a try. If you cannot get it with the mouse, you can always resort to the menus, look for an option called something like "Sort..." under the "View" main menu.
If you still cannot find what you are looking for, you can make your program search for you on the base of some specific words (for instance, show me all the mails that contain the word "Acupuncture"). To do that, look for options like "Find" or "Search" under the "Edit" menu. Beware that depending on the e-mail program you are using, you may have to select the mails where you want the program to look for. To look in all of them, go to the "Edit" menu and choose the option "Select all".
Like always, this are only some general references to make you realize the sort of things you can do. There is no substitute for reading the Manuals of your program or the "Help" provided.
Minimum netiquette rules (What!? What's a netiquette?)
When people communicate with each other, there are some implicit etiquette rules to follow. Since we learnt them from when we were babies (ok, almost all of as), we take them for granted. Screaming for instance, is considered to be rude in a conversation. Internet and its various faces (e-mail, chat, web publishing) is relatively new to many of as (i don't think any of as was born with an Internet connection next to the TV, that's for the coming generations) so we have to learn from scratch. I will concentrate here in the basics and some specific rules for mailing lists, other circuits (chat for instance) have their own set of specific rules.
One of the basic blocks of Internet is that it is an International Communication Media. You have to keep that in mind all the time, because it means (among others) different cultures, different languages (even when English is the de facto Universal Glue accepted), different time zones, and forgetting it could easily generate major misunderstandings.
The communications facilities under Internet are mostly written, not audiovisual. That leaves as with a not so powerful tool to express our feelings, so some conventions were accepted.
IF YOU WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS LIKE THIS it means you are screaming. So, unless you are intending to scream, use lower case always
Sometimes you can use certain letters combinations to give some tips about your expression. This are called smilies or emoticons (there are tons of them). For instance, this one :-) means i am smiling, and this one :-( means i am sad. Imagine them as faces laying in the floor. The : are the eyes, the - is the nose and the ) is the mouth.
This is so obvious, isn't it?. Unfortunately we forget to use it too many times.
What do i group under Common Sense:
Be polite
If you ever feel offended by something somebody said, try to figure out where is he/she from before getting upset. He/she might have a different background than yours, English might not be his/her mother language (my case) and he/she intended to mean something else, I think you can see the point. If you are still feeling upset, ask for further clarification (privately if possible).
Try not to use any localisms in the language you use. Be as clear as you can.
When you receive an e-mail, your mailer automatically translates the time and date of the Sender (using the Time Zone information that comes with that e-mail, that is the relation between the local time of the sender and the Greenwich time) to your local time, and uses that time to order in an ascending way the incoming mails. I think all of as saw at one time or another how the reply to a post appears prior to the original post, or an e-mail that gets stocked between those we received (and read) yesterday (or even worst, last month). If your time/date/time zone are incorrectly set, the location of your mail among the others are always going to confuse the other people in the list. If you are using Windows 95 or Windows NT you can see here how to set time/date/time zone combination.
Setting the Time, Date and Time Zone of your computer under Windows 95
Very specific rules for mailing lists
Read and keep the Help file sent to you when you subscribe a mailing list. Try to follow the indications written on it, they are going to tell you some basic netiquette asked for in that particular mailing list (length of the posts, length of the lines and others). It also has a lot of information about how to do things. It could be very annoying to see two or three posts to the list from the same person asking to be unsubscribed. Unsubscribing from a list is something you have to do by yourself and it's very clearly described in that Help file. If you missed it, e-mail the Administrator of the list privately asking for another copy (or look for it among the postings. People delete them so often that Admins repost it periodically to the list).
When replying to a post, leave just the pertinent text you are replying to.
Unless you are clearly changing the topic of a thread, don't change the subject description, it will make other people miss your post (or get confused) if they were following that thread. Coming back to my example about Acupuncture, let's suppose the tittle of that thread was "Acupuncture" and you are replying it. Don't change the subject to "Gold Needles". To easily follow the thread, the correct way to put the subject would be:
"Re: Acupuncture"
Most mailers will do that for you automatically if you use the Reply button or option.
It is considered good practice when replying, to send a copy privately to the sender of the post. In that way he/she will notice immediately your reply (instead of having to look at it between all the other posts). There is an easy way to do this under every e-mail program and mailing list. (it would involve for instance to use the option "Reply to sender and all recipients" for the EPIL-K9 list).
I would like to thanks Leslie Rochlen (see her page at http://members.aol.com/malindo/organize.html)
for turning an indigestible collection of words into some
understandable paragraphs.
Without her you would be confronted to things like "he are...".
Any remaining errors are due to my endless need to add something more.
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