Please read........mail

[Guest guest]

Dear Group,

I hope I'm not going to upset anyone with this, but I have been doing a lot

of thinking lately on how we can cut down the size of the digest for those of

you for whom this is important...........and I'm afraid that I just violated

the suggestion I am about to make with my last letter to the group. My

apologies........

There are several of us who keep extensive files, Barbara mostly......on

different medicines and subjects related to RLS. Most of us have seen these

files at one time or another, and made copies for ourselves......for which we

are tremendously grateful.

I think that if someone inquires about one of these files, the person holding

it should send a letter to the group advising them that they have it and will

send it upon request to anyone who would like to have it.......instead of

just putting the whole file in the letter. I just sent a letter with Iron

Information from the internet to the group, believing that if I labeled it as

that, those not interested could just delete. But I forgot that the whole

letter will be included in the digest, whether they wanted to open it or not.

This was a very bad mistake. I will now have a note on my computer

reminding me to check the size of my letters before I send them to the group.

Many times we copy large articles from the internet and forward it to the

group. I think we should also not do this. Instead we should send a letter

with the name and URL for the article and let people choose whether or not

they want to go there and read it. I know this was something that used to

upset Dr. Levin very much. There is nothing wrong with copying a small

paragraph or so that has very important information on it, but nothing more

than that should be sent.

By the same token, I really hate seeing people say that they are becoming too

afraid to write because they are worried about doing the wrong thing. We

should NOT be having that much of a problem with doing the wrong thing. We

all know the important no-no's......no selling and no rudeness........brief

social information and really good jokes are fine with most of us as long as

they are labeled as such and are not extremely long.

Do not be afraid to tell us if you are feeling really bad.........this is

what we are here for.......to support you in these times. We are most

definitely NOT just an information forum. Strict information can be found at

all of the other RLS sites on the Internet. We DO pass a lot of very

important information between us, but we also do a lot more than that for

each other.

As the group becomes larger, it is going to be more important than ever for

us to exercise a little discretion in the length of our letters......but I

think this is only relevant for the really long letters, not the regular

ones. It isn't actually the size of the letter that causes problems. A few

more sentences here or there do not make a difference. If we follow the

above advice about large files and continue to be careful about forwarding

DOUBLE letters and whole pages of addresses, we should pretty much have this

problem licked.

Anyone continuing to need help with the mechanics of this should not hesitate

to ask for it.

One last thing........if people continue to neglect this aspect of our

letter-writing, I hope we will remember to issue gentle reminders, and not

become impatient or in any way verbally abusive. Our sleeplessness and it's

consequences are enough of a price for us to pay.

Have a lovely evening, Everyone!

Connie, 62, MD