Re: my absence -- SUGGESTIONS on managing messages

[Guest guest]

To Terry and others with the same problem (including me):

I completely understand what you are saying and have some practical

suggestions which might help us all to continue to do our collective

sharing.

I belong to a few groups which, like this one, are popular because of

the potential value of information shared. They have some rules and

systems that make the number of posts manageable to read. First,

people are asked to TRIM the amount of the message they are replying

to to the minimum for understanding. I've done this here on the

yahoogroups site by going into Terry's message and highlighting

nonessential words and then pressing the " delete " key. In my email

system preferences, I've set the email so that it does not

automatically copy the message I'm replying to. I have to highlight

what I'd like repeated in my reply.

Some of the groups place new members on moderated status until it is

clear that they understand how to do this and do it consistently. I

think a group of volunteers take turns doing this, cutting and

pasting messages or returning to sender with the reminder to do so.

NOT censoring messages -- just making them shorter.

Second: If people will CHANGE THE SUBJECT LINE or add a word to show

where they are going with their replies, skimmers will have an easier

time of it and won't miss out on information they are interested in.

Those of us who don't have time to read individual emails usually opt

for digest mode. When the messages are shortened, they come as an

attachment and must be read by WordPad. This is terribly unweildy as

some messages are not wrapped and you have to scroll horizontally to

read them.

We should probably be aware that one-liners, like " Thanks " just take

up space and can be directed to individuals, unless it's a general

comment. Also -- and I may be guilty of this, too -- personal chit

chat and silly stuff should be shared in personal emails. One group

I belong to has an offshoot group strictly for chat. We can setup a

Graves' Silly Chat List for this.

So, to show that I'm willing to " Bell the Cat " , not just make

suggestions, I'll volunteer to do some moderating if others will

too. I hate it when we lose the input of some of the insightful

people who have been here long term.

Red

Terry P. wrote:

mostly I've skimmed the posts pretty quickly, for a couple of

reasons.

>

> One, the group is getting too big for my brain to keep track of. I

get > overwhelmed when I get 100 posts at once from this group! Not

that I don't > love all of ya, y'understand! But I don't have the

kind of mind that can > keep it all straight, I guess.

>