Dear all,
Having just caught up reading MD-postings after 2 weeks vacation
and reading quite a bit of frustration about MD being a bit
over-dynamic (and MF being stagnant), it seems time to share some
ideas about how to cope with mail overload on MD.
However difficult it may be to keep up with what everyone writes
on MD, to select the postings I want to react to and to find back
the gems that I want to refer back to, I have found ways to cope.
Sometimes I am lagging behind 1 or 2 weeks with my (substantial)
reactions, at the moment I am lagging behind nearly 2 months, but
I don't feel any more like I did in the first months: like losing
track of what was happening on the list. Maybe I will drop some
of the earlier postings I wanted to react to in order to catch up
reacting, maybe I will be more selective with new postings, I
will catch up somehow. Anyhow I now have a good overview of what
happens and I can find back everything that I want to find back.
I don't need a separate MF-list. I just treat what happens there
as another MD-thread, to which I contribute or not contribute
depending on subject and quality.
For me the 'Forum'-part of www.moq.org and the possibility to
have own essays published there (with quite some delay...) isn't
very useful either. I visit the website only seldom and usually
haven't got the time to read longer essays, so my time lag in
reacting to them is even longer than 2 months. Being essentially
monologues with little consideration for the readers (not
allowing for interruptions that can be taken into account), I
usually find their quality less than that of the better threads
on MD. If I would want to write and publish own essays (that are
really too long for MD, I sometimes do test the limits of
that...), it would be easier for me to do so on
www.antenna.nl/wim.nusselder/schrijfsels.
My main instrument to cope is the 'Postbox In Assistant' of
Outlook Express (in the 'Extra' drop down menu). I use it to move
all MD-mail (and MF-mail) immediately to a separate map when I
download it by selecting on the 'MD' (or 'MF') in the title.
Reading my other e-mails (which stay in the 'Postbox In'-map) has
more priority than reading MD- and MF-postings and thus they are
not overflowed by them. (Mail from other mailinglists go to
other separate maps. Some of them have less priority or won't
ever be read by me, except when I seek some specific
information.)
I could also delete e-mails from specific authors. (I need not
ask others to 'behave or leave', like Horse to Killer Blade 3/1
3:04 +0000. I can simply let my 'Postbox In Assistant' delete
mail from those who consistently misbehave before I even see it.)
I never delete e-mails (unless it is virus-infected and Norton
AntiVirus forces me to do so). I have them usually in
chronological order (unless I want to search by subject or
author) with the last (unread) ones on top. In this way I am
cumulating my own archives, which are much easier to search (with
Ctrl+Shift+F or the corresponding command from the drop-down
menus) than the web-archives. After having been subscribed to the
mailing list for 7 months, I only rarely go to the web-archives
any more. Mainly when my e-mail-provider temporarily breaks down
(leaving a gap in my own archives) or when someone else refers
back to an older posting. (This not only makes searching back
easier, Ctrl+Shift-F is also more powerful than the
search-engines for the web-archives and ... it saves me
telephone-costs.)
I could also let my 'Postbox In Assistant' copy all MD-postings
to a separate 'MD-archives'-map and delete the postings I have
read.
I leave postings I want to re-read or to react to marked
'unread'. I sometimes cut and paste the interesting bits from
postings into drafts (which I copy into a separate map) for later
inclusion in my contributions to the list. (I add author, date,
local time and time-zone to those quotes, -copied from the
'properties'/'details'-tab of the e-mail found with my right
mouse button- mainly to enable myself to find back their context,
if needed.)
As explained 14/11 23:04 +0100 I divide the postings I receive in
four categories:
1) Postings I mark 'read' after first reading them (some
extensively, others after only a glance).
2) Postings I react to immediately: only those ones that are very
personal, very provocative or easily answerable in a few
sentences. I must resist the temptation to react to too many
postings immediately (provoking replies by others, which I have
to reply to in return etc.) on pain of losing track again.
3) Postings which I plan to answer more carefully or extensively.
These I answer in chronological order, first ones first. (It is
these that have now cumulated into a pile of 30 of up to 2 months
old... I will not come round to answering them all of course.)
4) Postings (or rather subjects) which I plan to address
eventually, when I am not involved any more in current threads
asking a lot of my attention.
I usually address my reactions to one person only. If someone
else reacts to such a contribution of mine, it becomes (for me) a
separate 'e-correspondence'. Only in this way can I give these
'e-correspondences' (and those persons) the proper care. (Explain
to them that they have to wait a bit longer for a reply, for
instance...) I can only keep up a few of those
'e-correspondences' in the available time and I must resist the
temptation to start/provoke too many of them.
Exceptions are some of my short replies. I also would be willing
to make an exception for threads with a clearly demarcated
subject -by means of a starting question or statement- and
semi-moderated by the person who threw up the subject. I would
applaud more such threads (which would automatically lessen but
not rule out other more chaotic/dynamic discussions). I am
planning to try to start one myself in the near future about
Q-economics.
I would be interested to read about how others cope with mail
overload.
Don't bother to react to my ideas and practices if you don't find
them helpful for yourself.
Well that might even be a more generally applicable advice to
keep this mailinglist from becoming too dynamic: don't bother to
react to anything you don't find helpful (except when you fear
that ignoring might alienate an otherwise valued contributor to
the list). It would spare us a lot of 'squabbling and personal
attacks'.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:46 BST