Help with Internet E-mail,
Mailing Lists and 
Other Internet Postings

For those new to Internet E-mail, Mailing Lists and Other Internet Postings.

Table of Contents for this page:

• Preface.
• Introduction.
• What is E-mail? (Why are E-mail and Other Internet Postings Different?)
• Learn-By-Doing (practice with yourself, then with a friend).
• Starting and Ending - start with a greeting; end with your name and a signature file.
• Always enter a good "Subject:" line.
• Emotional Content in E-mail Messages, with notes on flaming and trolling.
• Line-Length in E-mail Messages (keep them shorter than full-width).
• Signature Files (rationale, example).
• Creating a Signature File - Steps, both for Exchange users and for the general case.
• Confirmation Requests (they can be seen as a bit of a nuisance).
• Using Rich Text Format or HTML in e-mail messages (be sure they are turned off for Internet messages).
• Keeping Files of E-mail Messages.
• E-mail Costs (very low), and Privacy Caution (60 Kb).
• Long E-mail Messages.
• Copying E-mail Messages (or Excerpts) (a great convenience; some hazards).
• A Big Copying Hazard - slander, defamation, libel, etc., especially in humor, and especially when using an e-mail account provided by your employer.
• Replying and Replying with a (short) Quote (add context to your message).
• Attached Files and Virus Threats.
• Avoid Sending "Spam" E-mail Messages to Anyone.
• E-mail Address Books (keeping track of mailing list addresses).
• Mailing Lists - introductory descriptions and some cautionary notes.
• Mailing Lists - Guidelines (informal DOs and DON'Ts).
• Mailing Lists - Your Role as Publisher (legal implications to think about).
• Mailing Lists - Posting Messages for Distribution to All Subscribers (more informal guidelines).
• Mailing Lists - Vacations, Leaving your Employment, and Closing E-mail Accounts (avoiding "bounces").
• Mailing Lists - Finding and Subscribing to Them (a few places to look).
• Getting off a Mailing List (also called Unsubscribing or Signing Off).
• Mailing Lists - Starting Your Own (be sure you want to do this!).
• What Does Access to E-mail and Other Internet Postings Mean?
• (includes comments on Global Communities of Interest; Intellectual Interaction).
• How to Cope with Unwanted E-mail (often called "spam").
• Translating E-mail Messages in Foreign Languages.
• Related Topics:
• Links to E-mail Guides, etc. (informal suggestions of others).
• Auto-Responders, Mail Robots, Reflectors, Mirrors (automatic responses to e-mail messages).
• HTML Mail Format - what it is; testing your mail client; what it means.
• E-mail Zines (Magazines), with a link to a site listing Zines with subscription information.
• Internet Access via E-mail to access FTP, Archie, Gopher, Veronica, Usenet, WAIS, Finger, Whois, and even the World-Wide Web via E-mail.
• FAXes via E-mail (avoiding toll charges and/or improving reliability).
• E-mail and Enhanced or Secure E-mail Services via the Web.
• Searching for E-mail Addresses (this item is on another page).
• Footnotes and See Also resources.

Preface

Mailing Lists have been overtaken to some degree now by Web Logs ("Blogs", hence Bloggers and Blogging) and social networking sites which accomplish some of the same purposes of Communities of Interest, but do so using web pages rather than e-mail. Although this page does not deal directly with Blogs and social networking sites, many of the same principles apply to Blogs, Social Networking sites and to Mailing Lists.

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Introduction

It will also help you to know that although e-mail is very trendy in the 2000's, it has many of its roots in the 1960's and 1970's when desktop computers were only a dream. This means that many of the traditions and procedures concerning e-mail (and especially mailing lists) have been developed and refined over many years. Some of these systems maintain the trappings of their earlier cousins, partly because much of the software was developed by volunteers (and has not yet been redeveloped by commercial providers), and partly because of a need to maintain compatibility with ancient archives of messages, postings data bases, etc.

The third thing to keep in mind is that your messages are broken up into fragments (called packets) and sent via lots of potentially different routes to their destination. There, they are reassembled in the order you wrote them, and delivered. The point here is that your messages (or fragments thereof) can be found lying around in lots of queues, backup files, etc., in the files of lots of different computers between here and there. Every computer which handles your message makes several copies in the course of forwarding it to its ultimate destination. This transmission mechanism has significant privacy implications.

With these provisos in mind, e-mailing and participation in other Internet forums can be a very rewarding and fundamentally important access method for participating in the Information Age.

What is E-mail?

"Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail," is a Rand Corporation classic dating from 1985. It has a relaxed and balanced tone, is written for the general reader and well worth the time, especially for those new to e-mail. It talks about the paradox of e-mail's "volatility with permanence" that can be difficult to reconcile. It also identifies the risks and tendencies associated with conveying emotion in e- mail messages, and lists a number of thoughtful and effective cautions and remedies.

The related question: "What does access to e-mail mean?" is considered in a section by that name below.

Other guides, etc., may be seen in the section Links to E-mail Guides, etc., below.

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Learn-By-Doing

• NOTE: Sending an e-mail message to yourself is far from a facetious suggestion. By sending yourself a note, you can check the "Reply to:" address, for example, by then also replying to that test message. If you are new to the Internet, and have configured your e-mail handler yourself, it is an excellent way to test whether you have done at least that part of it right. You might be surprised to hear how many e-mail messages I get, which, when I reply, the reply bounces because they put in the wrong "Reply to:" address. And then, though I feel badly for the person, there is typically no way to reach them at all. Most do not include a signature file, either (which would at least allow me to reach them some way). Worse: none of their friends can reply to them either, unless they know that what is broken is the "Reply to:" address. Some of them go on needlessly for weeks wondering why nobody replies to their e-mail messages (!).

Remember that if you send an e-mail from somebody else's machine, or from a form on their web browser, the system will attach that person's e-mail FROM address. You can overcome that by just explaining it to your correspondent, and providing your own e-mail address in the text of your note. Double check that every character is correct, however, if you do that.

You can also send me an e-mail message for practice if you wish. Here is a special form to make it very easy. If I can possibly squeeze it in, I will send you a reply, too.

Starting and Ending

Start with a greeting; end with your name and a signature file.

Internet e-mail is different.

First, there will often be people who see your message who do not know you at all; and second, e-mail messages (and replies) tend to migrate around well beyond the readership boundaries you initially considered.

Because e-mail is so easy to copy, and because some mailers quickly lose track of who is sending and who is receiving the message (particularly on multiply- forwarded messages) a message with several comments and replies is substantially impossible to follow except for the parties who wrote it.

As an aid in helping others to understand who is saying what to whom, always begin your e-mail message with what your third grade teacher called a "salutation." In letters, it is "Dear So-and-so:" (often Mr. Jones, or other formality). In e-mail it is typically "Hi So-and-so," (first name). At the end, you signed off with "Sincerely," or "Yours truly," (whatever that meant). In e-mail, some writers include these closings; but the important thing is to close with your name, and always include a signature file. (Note: The detailed steps for creating a signature file are available; and they are written for those not familiar with creation of plain text files).

The result, in multiply-forwarded (or replied to) messages, is a series of comments which other people can follow. You should always write e-mail messages as if they will eventually be forwarded to somebody who does not know you (or the context of the message), may not even like you, and for whom all of the information on the subject will come from the quoted e-mail message.

If, for each segment of the message, there is an identified recipient, and at the bottom an identified sender, then the message becomes readable for everyone. It also makes it much easier for those new to e-mail to follow any message (regardless of the current condition of the headers). Keep in mind that the "To:", "From:" and "Subject:" portions of an e-mail message (called "headers") are displayed or concealed by various e-mail message handlers as the message is transmitted (or forwarded, or imported, or exported) from party to party. We are rapidly approaching the time when machines will do much of the sorting, prioritizing, re-directing/forwarding and filing of e-mail messages. And if the present is any guide, these machines will not always (or even often) be programmed to preserve senders and receivers with any degree of reliability. If the body of your message contains this information, then it will be preserved intact for all.

Subject Lines - Use Good Ones

If those days are not gone, they are definitely numbered. As we handle more and more of our communications via e-mail, we will more and more face the dilemma of which messages to open next. In no time, we will no doubt need to decide which messages to open at all, forwarding some, and turfing others outright. Recognizing that many e-mail messages are used to ask somebody else for some assistance, we can help them (perhaps raising the probability that they will be inclined to help us) by giving them all of the "open-or-forward-or-turf" information in a well-written subject line. Think of how they will react to your subject-less message if they are facing an in-box with 150 messages the day yours arrives.

With a good subject line, when our message is forwarded to others, they will be able to understand the subject matter even though that is the only context they have initially. Finally, when the message is filed in some data base or archive, readers will be able to make the "open-or-bypass" decision based on our good subject lines. Again, many of these data bases and archives will be stoked by machines. We will want our message to be filed in the correct category, and given the correct priority; and both will be helped substantially through our use of accurate, descriptive key-words in subject lines (and by consistently using exactly the same spelling for our name, by the way).

I have found that starting with a Subject line helps me focus on exactly what it is that I want to communicate. Then, when the note is written, re-visiting the subject line allows me to fine-tune it, or to add a component that only came up as I wrote the note.

"How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines," by Jakob Nielsen (a very readable web design and usability guru) explains that headings, titles and e-mail subject lines "need to be pearls of clarity: you get 40-60 characters to explain your macrocontent. Unless the title or subject make it absolutely clear what the page or email is about, users will never open it." On-line headings are different from print headings because they are often displayed out-of-context, such as in lists of articles, results from a search query, in- box lists, etc., says Nielsen. Considering a headline on the sports page of a newspaper, for example, a great deal can be inferred at a glance from that context. Not so in many on-line situations (most of which are not of the author's making, incidentally). Many experienced e-mail users have so much mail, they delete messages if they cannot immediately recognize and make sense of them. This is the "delete by default" syndrome that we are hoping will not be applied to our message. We minimize that with a good subject line. Keep the most important information content to the left, less important content to the right (in case it is truncated somewhere).

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Emotional Content in E-mail Messages and Internet Postings

In the Mailing Lists section below, in Guidelines for Posting we mention some of the hazards of replying to a message when you are angry. E-mail messages can't be recalled, for example, after you have calmed down (or anytime, for that matter). The Rand classic "Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail," identifies the risks and tendencies associated with conveying emotion in e-mail messages, and lists a number of thoughtful and effective cautions and remedies. It has a relaxed and balanced tone, is written for the general reader and well worth the time, especially for those new to e-mail. In their section "Receiving and Responding to Messages," they have sub-sections "Avoid responding while emotional" and "If a message generates emotions, look again" which are very helpful. Their section "The Phenomenon of 'Flaming'" also contains good information about possible origins and causes. They present helpful information to be aware of before it comes up in your own messages.

Of course, there are always those whose purpose is to provoke an emotional response, especially on mailing lists, in newsgroups and in other discussion forums. It is a very potent way to neutralize the effectiveness of these electronic Communities of Interest (See "The Natural Life Cycle Of Mailing Lists," a classic from Kat Nagel (1994) that talks about some of the social aspects of mailing lists and other Internet postings). Anyhow, this provocative activity is called trolling; and some individuals have honed it to a fine art.

Since these difficulties seem to come up most often in criticisms of other people's work, it may be well for all of us to make a shift in approach when communicating with e-mail and in other Internet postings. It is much easier to be a critic than a builder. If we all made as big a shift as we can from critic to builder, and made special efforts in editing and revising to minimize the shortcomings of the e-mail form and in other Internet postings, perhaps we will help to reduce misunderstandings and ill will on all sides. [See also the section "The Phenomenon of 'Flaming'" in the Rand paper "Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail" mentioned above].

See also: a Washington Post [cookies (cookie caution)] article "E-mail Fosters Misunderstandings at the Office" [more cookies (cookie caution)], which points out that effort is required in all e-mail interaction to reduce communication difficulties.

See also: a review of Patricia Wallace's book "The psychology of the Internet." Wallace describes "the specificities of online contexts, as well as the similarities between human behavior, online and offline. The result is an interesting and well-written book that offers an overall perspective on online behavior."

See also: the section below, "Mailing Lists - Starting Your Own," and the references there concerning on-line communities of interest, the use of mailing lists for computer mediated communication, etc.

Line-Length in E-mail Messages

A line length around 65 characters is about right.

Signature Files

The page on e-mail costs has a section on signature files, and an example.

The detailed steps for creating a signature file are also available; and they are written for those not familiar with creation of plain text files.

Confirmation Requests

In fact, for your Internet e-mail generally, turn off the receipt or confirmation request option. Every mail handler is different; some can handle it; some cannot. And others handle it completely wrong. Forwarded or re-directed mail frequently looses the confirmation option; and in other cases, it returns a delivery confirmation when the mail has not been delivered at all, merely forwarded. Asking for these confirmations doubles the amount of e-mail traffic for very little return; and it is considered an intrusion by experienced e-mail users. It is about like sending out every letter at the post office by "return receipt requested." You would not want to impose that on anybody (certainly not anybody whose respect you wanted to retain) unless it was really necessary. Just rely on the reply to your e-mail to confirm that the original message was received, or send the message by some other means.

For those using MS Exchange, be sure to use the Properties option in the File menu to change these options for the message your are currently composing. The options in the tools menu affects only subsequent messages.

Using Rich Text Formats in E-mail Messages

There will be circumstances in which these enhancements will be a preferred option. In your Internet e-mail messages, however, you will need to exercise caution. As with all things Microsoft, the RTF feature has been implemented with the expectation that sooner or later everybody (perhaps only "everybody who counts") will be using Microsoft products. In the meantime, however, you need to know that the Rich Text Format and HTML tags are appended to the message somewhat like an attached file. If the mail handler receiving the message happens to be Exchange or one of its variants, then it is usually handled correctly. (Or, at least, it does not cause undue grief). This is an advanced feature which some existing mailers cannot handle; and it has been implemented in such a way that most mailers are not able to just ignore it either.

It would be bad enough that most mailers do not handle these tags at all well. Worse, there are mailing list servers which react to them only badly. In the case of a non-Microsoft mail handler, the person receiving the message sees what looks like an attached file. When opened (if they can open it at all), it appears to be a shambles. In some cases, both the message and the "attached file" are garbled. In any case, the recipient is sure s/he has missed something in the attachment. When they query you about it, you don't remember sending any attachment. And, unless you know how it got there, both of you are then baffled. In the case of mailing lists, not only do most list servers not handle attachments--they are not Microsoft creations; when the so-called "attachments" are garbled, it creates no end of grief for list owners and managers. As with confirmation requests (above), sending Rich Text Formatted or HTML messages is a very efficient way to become persona non grata on that list for a good long time. You give yourself a bad name; if you send it from work, you give your employer a bad name; and all of it is for no benefit whatsoever.

The short answer to Rich Text Formats and HTML is to just say no. When you encounter a friend who also uses the Exchange client, and with whom you can exchange these messages successfully, then Rich Text Formats may be ok. The drawback, even there, of course, comes when you decide to forward something from that friend to somebody else (or, heaven forbid, to a list). At that point, you have to remember to turn off the Rich Text Format, or you will very likely be embarrassed (... or worse).

Keeping Files of E-mail Messages

It is a certainty, however, that others will have copies of your correspondence. Some will keep them for a long time. And those who are your enemies, will likely use them in ways you might not like.

E-mail Costs

Long E-mail Messages

If you have two subjects on which to correspond with the same person, consider sending two messages. It adds a little overhead; but it allows the other party to file or forward them separately, for example. This can be a bigger advantage than you might think for a busy e-mail reader.

Jakob Nielsen (a very readable guru who studies on-ine design generally) explains that by keeping your e-mail messages short you may be doing your readers a great favor. In his Alertbox column "Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages" he says (my emphasis): "A striking conclusion from the studies is that processing email is stressful. Users frequently told us that they were too busy to deal with certain email messages, and that they considered any fluff in messages a waste of time. When they check their email, users are typically dealing with multiple requests for their time—whether from their boss, colleagues, or family. People just want to be done with most email, and quickly move past anything that is not absolutely essential. "

See also the section on "Attached Files" below.

Copying E-mail Messages and other Internet postings

The flip side of that notion is to keep in mind that somebody might send a copy of your e-mail message or other Internet posting to somebody else. And if that happens more than about once, the tendency is for subsequent parties to see it much more as a public document than the product of an individual. Furthermore, anybody can alter your original message before they pass it on. Nobody receiving the altered message will know that isn't what you originally wrote. You may wish, therefore, to write as if you are going to be quoted (or mis-quoted). See the privacy caution for additional details, and the "Big Copying Hazard" section below.

A Big Copying Hazard

The informality of e-mail and other Internet postings makes them nearly ideal for the exchange of humor. Many employers provide e-mail facilities for their staff, and at least tacitly encourage them to use it for a wide variety of communications relating to their employment. Humor and enjoyment are often found in corporate "values." The combination, however, can lead to unforeseen complications in the absence of careful thought.

Consider, for example, a harmless joke sent to a colleague or posted in an Internet forum. Such an exchange is unlikely to lead to any difficulty. But it is not much of a stretch to move from that to a joke with some racial, ethnic or sexual content which somebody may find objectionable, even if it is perfectly harmless as seen by you and your colleague (the only intended participants in the correspondence). Humor tends to be exchanged, however. And one of the things that will really amaze you sometime early in your e-mail career is where your messages end up. I have been doing this now for quote a few years; and I have been more than a little surprised more than once.

The point here is that when you make a comment in writing (or forward one from somebody else), and you do it using e-mail or other facilities provided by your employer, you make them (and you) a target of those who may find your comments objectionable (see Records section, in E-mail Privacy Caution). Lawsuits have been filed for sexual harassment, racial discrimination and related claims using e-mail messages and other Internet postings as evidence.

Inevitably, any e-mail message you write has the potential to be routed sooner or later to those who do not share your views on good humor, or your other views. Messages posted to mailing lists or to newsgroups or other Internet forums will get there sooner rather than later (and they will very likely be kept for a very long time). At any rate, by making your comments in writing you have assumed the role of publisher to some extent. It would be well to keep all this in mind while preparing any e-mail message or other Internet posting.

Replying and Replying with a (short) Quote.

If your reply is going to a mailing list, it is even more important to trim the quotation to the minimum in your reply. List readers often complain of being annoyed by reading most of a quoted post followed by "right on!" or some such reply. Because we say to keep the quotation to a minimum, however, please do not think that no quotation would then be best of all. Very often, a short quote is the very best way to put your reply in context. Keep in mind that on mailing lists, and particularly in newsgroups, the article you are quoting might not yet be available to some of your readers. Quoting a small excerpt will provide convenient context for everyone.

If you are using an e-mail system which does not allow you to trim the quotation in your reply, export (or save) the message to a text processor, trim the quote, and import the trimmed quote back into your reply.

Quoting a part of a message in a reply, by the way, usually involves editing in a ">" or other character in the front of each line and prefacing it with "Fred Jones wrote:" or some other identifier of the quoted material. It does not matter what character you use to identify quotes. In fact, if you are quoting a piece that already has another quote in it, you might choose a symbol that is different from the one which has already been used. Otherwise, the number of ">" characters indicates the depth of the quotation sources. The section "Line-Length in E-mail Messages" above points out the need to keep the line lengths short as an aid in quoting excerpts.

Finally, if it improves clarity, insert a "<snip> " or "<deletia> " note where you have cut material from the original author's material. This is particularly helpful if you quote two pieces of it, or cut a section out of the middle. If you really need it, add a short description of what you have cut out, such as "<snipped description>". Such a notation may be helpful to others (especially on a mailing list) who did not see the original post.

Always include a signature file in your replies. (Note: The detailed steps for creating a signature file are available; and they are written for those not familiar with creation of plain text files).

Attached Files and Virus Threats

The earliest e-mail handlers could handle only ASCII text characters. When other files became commonly used, a method was needed for easily exchanging them using e-mail. Various methods (such as MIME encoding) have been contrived in which these files are actually converted to strings of ASCII-only characters so they can be conveyed by every e-mail handler on the Internet. Of course, once a file is encoded on one end, your recipient needs the corresponding decoder at his/her end too.

Files are "attached" to e-mail messages in two ways: the simplest for you is like an attachment to a letter written on paper. The file is actually conveyed with the e-mail message, but as a separate document. The second way involves importing the attachment into the mail message so that it becomes part of the message (just as if it had been entered there from the keyboard). Most mailers have a setting in which you can specify if you want attachments to go as separate files (the usual way), or to be included in the message (much simpler for most mail handlers to deal with). To obtain a text version of a WORD file, use FILE | SAVE AS and pick "Text Only." When the file is saved, all the tags, fonts, tables, etc., are stripped away, leaving only the text characters; and the file gets a .txt suffix. Text files also contain no macro capability. The resulting text file can then be included in your e-mail message using cut and paste, using some "include" function in your mail handler.

Include attachments in messages where the attachment consists of a relatively small number of ASCII text characters. Otherwise, there is no alternative but to attach them separately. Older e-mail clients can handle only ASCII text characters (plus maybe a few others); and any file from a text processor (such as WordPerfect, WORD, AmiPro, etc.) will be laced with special characters, and will need to have its formatting and other special characters protected by what is called "encapsulation."

Your mailer may handle attachments with great ease; but you may then find that when your message with its attachment gets to the recipient, s/he cannot decode it. Some free e-mail services do not even allow attachments. They just strip them off before putting the mail into the subscriber's mail box. Furthermore, novice e-mail users often have difficulty knowing where the mailer "hides" attachments after they arrive. If possible, make the attachment a part of the message. Any mail handler can deal with that. If you must make a separate attachment, help the person to whom you are sending the message at least to the following extent:

• tell the recipient (in your message) what kind of a file it is (a WORD or .RTF document, a WordPerfect file or document, etc.).

• tell him/her what its file name is (REPORT.DOC, LETTER.WPF, MEMO.WPD). Using .RTF (Rich Text Format in MS WORD, by the way, is much preferred over the plain WORD document format. RTF is preferred because it retains all the formatting such as bold type, centered lines, etc., but RTF has no macro capability. This means that you cannot transmit a macro virus to anybody--and the recipient knows he cannot get a macro virus from anybody if the file is in the .RTF format). Just use the FILE | SAVE AS options, and select the Rich Text Format (RTF) option. Then attach the *.RTF version of the file.

If you are sending a message to multiple recipients, keep in mind that you may have to attach the attachment using a separate method for each one. The only universally acceptable method is to include it as part of your message. If the attachment is large, experiment with a smaller version of a similar file. When your recipient is able to receive it, detach it, decode it and read it, then send the bigger one using the same technique.

Attached files are sometimes treated as if they were encoded when they are received by the other person's mail handler, by the way. Be careful to test the result before discarding the file that was attached to an out-bound message. You may receive a plaintive call to have it re-sent.

If attached files are in plain text, limiting them to the same line length as the e-mail message might be a thoughtful consideration.

Be very careful of attached files in messages to be posted to mailing lists, however. Most mailing list servers have a dreadful time with attachments. Check with the list owner before sending any e-mail message with an attachment to a mailing list. Additional information is contained in the Mailing List cautions below. If the attachment is large, consider just announcing to members of the list that it is available. If they want the material, they can then ask you for it individually (and you can send it to each of them, tailored individually to their equipment, systems and level of experience).
 

Virus Threats

Keep in mind that Microsoft WORD documents, Excel spreadsheets (and some others) contain macro capabilities which can introduce viruses into your desktop computer and your internal network. In addition, any file with an .exe suffix is an executable program which may contain a virus. Always consider the source before executing a program or opening a WORD or Excel file you received as an e-mail attachment. If you have any suspicion about it, see your technical people or delete the attachment without opening or executing it. You can save your correspondents from the same dilemma by only using attachments when they are really required, and by being sure you do not inadvertently pass on a file containing a virus. Using RTF files instead of WORD documents will always be helpful. Remember: they will see you as the sender, and will figure you have satisfied yourself that the file is safe before sending it on to them.

Avoid Sending "Spam" E- mail Messages to Anyone.

New e-mail users need to be conscious of putting e-mail messages in other people's e-mail boxes that these other people might see as "spam." Early in the game, having lots of messages in your in-box can be quite enjoyable, and informative. As you gain more experience, many of these messages become redundant, then annoying. Keep in mind that some people pay for their Internet services by the number of bytes transferred to their mail boxes. You don't want to cause another person to incur costs to receive your announcement unless you are dead certain they would want that.

Advertisements are somewhere near the top of the universally-recognized "spam" list. Almost nobody wants to receive e-mail advertisements. Off-color or objectionable messages (or their associated graphics), often masquerading as humor, are also high on that list. And they can be risky, too. See the "Big Copying Hazard" section.

The thing to remember before clicking on the "reply to all" button of a message sent to lots of people is "does everybody really want to hear this reply of mine?" If not, then select those whom you know would like to see it.

When you make an announcement or endorsement, make it only to those who will want to hear it. Making your announcement or endorsement based more on facts and less on hype and opinion will help too. Give your reasons, and make them rational and coherent. When you make either an announcement or an endorsement in a post to a mailing list, be sure you learn and follow the guidelines for that list before doing so. All lists will have some rules about these kinds of posts; and it is worthwhile to be seen as a responsible subscriber when you have something to tell them about (particularly if they might think you have something to gain from it). See the Mailing Lists - Posting Messages for Distribution to All Subscribers section.

One pretty safe way around being seen as a "spammer" is to let people know with a very short message that you have something to announce. Give it a really good descriptive subject, so that some people can delete it without even opening it, and others can read your offer in two or three sentences and easily discard that if they are not interested. Then, invite those who are interested to ask for the details. That practice at least keeps the size of the unsolicited message to a minimum. Even in this case, however, be sure to follow the conventions for the mailing list before posting such a message to a list, and be sure it is "on topic" for the list (not merely likely to be interesting to most subscribers).

If you are in doubt if somebody else would like to receive your message, don't send it. Think of another way to let them know what you are offering.

Marcia Yudkin has written a really good book: Marketing Online: Low-cost, High-yield Strategies for Small Businesses and Professionals that has been surprisingly well accepted by experienced e-mail users, considering the topic. She has three chapters on-line (Table of Contents) which are must reading for new e-mail users who want to use the Internet and e-mail inoffensively in their businesses. Marcia distinguishes between "schmoozing" and selling with some excellent examples and the responses they evoked. Her writing is down-to-earth, easy to read, and very informative.

E-mail Address Books

A good practice is to maintain an address book which will allow you to inform all your correspondents of your new mailing address before you leave. Failing that, you can at least inform them of your impending departure so they don't cause somebody a lot of extra work after you have gone.

This file can be copied to a removable medium (floppy, jump drive, etc.), and taken with you to your new location. And it does not hurt to keep a copy of your address book on a removable medium, and take it home as a matter of routine. You will be amazed at how lost you are if you cannot find an e-mail address you once had.

Mailing Lists - Introduction

Rather than employing editors and writers, most mailing lists are run like cooperatives in which any subscriber posts his or her contribution anytime he or she has something to say. The "something to say" may be an original article, of course, or (more often) it may be an expansion, reply, rebuttal or new point of view concerning an article posted by another contributor. It is this interactive and "many-points-of- view" character that makes mailing lists such a powerful communication tool.

Mailing lists and other Internet postings are used to inform people with common interests. They are one of the important and powerful vehicles which aid in the formation of interest groups (also called communities or associations of interest). The section below, entitled "What Does Access to E-mail and other Internet postings Mean?" describes these groups, and provides a glimpse of their potential to change the way we think.

Mailing lists and other Internet forums also quickly grow in terms of the numbers of participants when Internet access is available. And most mailing lists and other Internet postings are free to subscribers because of low costs. These factors led long ago to their automation. Typically, therefore, when you subscribe to a mailing list, or post a message, you are mailing to a computer rather than a human. This relieves a lot of tedium; but it creates a few problems too. The Learning Organization Mailing List has a very friendly and helpful page of instructions which describes how that mailing list works (written for the general reader and the new Internet user). They use Majordomo, so the specific instructions apply to that list server (which they call a robot). The page of instructions is very well done, however; and the principles apply to most mailing lists. They also provide some of the best explanations of the whys and wherefores of mailing list practice. This page can be very helpful as an introduction for those new to mailing lists.

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Mailing Lists - General Guidelines

1. When you subscribe to a mailing list or participate in other Internet forums, be sure your in-bound mail handlers can handle the volumes generated by the mailing lists you plan to subscribe to. Your e-mail administrator can advise you concerning this question. But the point to keep in mind is that mailing lists are staffed mostly by volunteers. If e-mail sent to you bounces (is returned to the sender) because you are away, or because your mailbox is too full, or for any other reason, somebody will have to deal with it. By anticipating these questions to some degree, you can save these volunteers some needless extra work.
2. When you subscribe to a mailing list, please keep a file somewhere that you and others can find. When you move, somebody will have to deal with your e-mail; and you likely will want to unsubscribe (or signoff) from mailing lists before you leave to avoid that. For mailing lists with infrequent mailings, you need to have a reliable place to find their address, and their instructions for unsubscribing. The usual drill, by the way, is to unsubscribe when you leave, and resubscribe from your new e-mail address when you get there, rather than attempting any change to your e-mail address. Moreover, some mailing lists will only accept your posts and changes if they come from the e-mail address which you were using when you subscribed. If you leave that until after your e-mail address is expunged, you can cause lots of people a lot of needless extra work.
3. Keep in mind that some mailing lists can have several distributions per day. I subscribed to one list early in my experimentation that sent me 46 messages over a weekend. A few have much larger distributions. Other lists can go for weeks or even months without a single distribution.
4. You need to know what all the rules are for each mailing list (such as how to unsubscribe, how to change your status, and how to make a posting); and you need to have the means to handle the volume of messages which you will receive. These are described in the welcome message.
5. You need to be very careful to distinguish at least three addresses when you deal with mailing lists: (1) is the address of the list server (which is also called the listserv address), (2) is the list address, where you submit your postings, and (3) is the list owner. The first two are typically computers (often the same computer, but with two different addresses); and the third is typically a human.
• You use the first address to send commands such as SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, INDEX and HELP.
• You use the second address when you post a message to be automatically circulated to all the other subscribers including yourself.
• And you use the third address when you want to talk to a human.
6. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that every list has different commands, is implemented using different list server software (listserv [1], listproc [2] and majordomo [3] are the three I have encountered most often), and mailing list information may or may not identify an owner.
7. You also need to know what the mailing list's commands are. Every list is potentially different; and you can be really embarrassed if the in-bound volumes become unmanageable, for example, and you do not even know how to unsubscribe, or where to direct your unsubscription notice. Everything is made more complicated if you are away when a problem comes up. There are lots of other commands, such as how to request the list's submission and posting guidelines, how to switch your subscription to the "digest" edition (see below), whether there is an archive (and how to access it), and a great many others. This information is usually contained in a HELP (or FAQ or INFO) file. There are two schools of thought about the HELP files: one is that you should get it and keep a printed copy on file; the other is that you should wait until you need it so you can get the latest one. Both arguments have merit: the main thing is to keep the welcome note. If it contains directions for unsubscribing and for obtaining the HELP file, you can probably wait. If it does not, then you should probably request the help file straightway so that at least you know how to unsubscribe or signoff.
8. If the owner is identified, my advice is to suppress the impulse to send him/her a query about the mailing list. Keep in mind that people sponsor lists largely out of the goodness of their hearts; and nobody wants to add a bunch of administrative chores to his or her workload. There are a number of frequently asked questions (FAQ), for which there is usually a file of standard answers, called a FAQ file, a HELP file, or simply FAQ. More than likely your initial questions are all answered in the FAQ. When you subscribe to a mailing list the list server will frequently send you an acknowledgment and include a mini-help file (sometimes called a welcome note) that tells you a little about the list, how to post a message, and with advice about how to unsubscribe as a minimum. The more helpful welcome messages also tell you how you can get a HELP file or the FAQ file, whether there is an ARCHIVE, and other useful information. All this goes into your file for that mailing list; and it is used to build the proper entries in your Address Book. Remember, when you have a problem with a mailing list, it usually relates to the fact that you do not know which address to use, or you can't find the right one, or the one you thought was right causes a bounce. If you don't have a file of this information, the next result is lots of risk of embarrassment (both for you and your employer or Internet service provider).
9. Some mailing lists have a "digest" edition to which you can subscribe. In that model, some administrator (or more likely, some computer) accumulates the postings for a day or a week or until a certain number are in hand (or until some other criterion is met). Then, the mail handler sends the collected "digest" to all the digest recipients as a single message. This can reduce the number of messages, but it does not change the total volume of information, of course.
10. Most mailing lists keep an archive of past distributions (that are kept for a very long time). In those cases, you can view them by subject or author and download the ones you want. If you are restricted in your e-mail volumes, there are often ways to become a passive subscriber in which you have access to the archive, but you do not receive any of the regular distributions. This can change the volumes dramatically; but it requires you to take action every time you want to see what has been distributed recently. And this defeats one of the principal purposes of subscribing to a mailing list.
11. Some mailing lists are one-way (or distribution- only) lists, and some are two-way or interactive. In a one-way list, some moderator collects the material and receives all the posts (or simply thinks them up). He or she then picks what is distributed to those on the list. More common are the interactive lists in which the subscribers are all contributors. In this model, everybody hears what everybody else wants to say (though the relevance criteria tend to be interpreted much more broadly).
12. If you subscribe to an interactive list, be sure you know what you are doing when you reply to a post. Remember that in some mailers, when you hit the "Fwd/Reply" button, it will pick up the e-mail address which sent you the material and prepare to send your reply to them. For an individual e-mail message that is exactly what you want. For a mailing list message, you likely will get the mailing list's address, however (because that is who sent you the message). Whatever you reply will then go to the mailing list, which will be automatically distributed it to all the (perhaps hundreds or thousands) of subscribers. You can really be embarrassed if your reply was intended only for the author of the post. See also section "Replying and Replying with a (short) Quote" above.

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Mailing Lists - Your Role as Publisher

1. Warning: When you submit or post an article in an Internet forum or to a mailing list (by whatever means) you need to keep in mind that you then take on the role of publisher in some important respects (particularly as it relates to the law). I am no lawyer; but you might like to keep in mind some of the following:

• to be certain that you have permission for all your quotations (see Copying E-mail Messages, above),

• to be careful about libel and slander, especially if you are hot under the collar about something. [In general, by the way, if you are going to dispute something, take it up individually with the person with whom you disagree. Admittedly, this is less satisfying, especially for some egos. But it is quite a bit better for the welfare of the list. Later, you and your adversary can post your differences in a form which contains more light and less heat. Or maybe the two of you can even collaborate in a really elegant exposition of both sides of the issue.]

• See also the "Big Copying Hazard" section above. When exchanging humor, you need to really think about this one.

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Mailing Lists and Other Internet Forums - Guidelines for Posting

1. Read the items posted by others for a while before considering your own posting. By reading a while, you gain a much better understanding of the purposes, relevance criteria and subject matter of the list. [This "read-only" activity is called "lurking," by the way. And some people who, after lurking for a while, actually make a post, call it "de-lurking." I would be more inclined to call it "participating." But who knows?]
2. Post only questions, information and comments that are relevant to the subject of the list and which are not answered already in the FAQ or help files. Many experienced Internet users are surprisingly short-tempered about irrelevant or off-topic postings; and you save a lot of time and embarrassment by checking the FAQ file before posting a question answered there.
3. Please do not post personal messages (even if replying to a post), complaints (sometimes called flames), or test messages. Send personal messages and complaints to the person concerned. Read the welcome post to learn how to post a message. If others post contrary items, please do not respond to them, except individually. In particular, please do not respond to nuisance posts like "is anybody out there?" or "does this list work?" It only adds clutter nobody wants.
4. Perhaps the most-appreciated guideline for posting is the following: "if you do not have anything to say, don't say it." [I wish I knew who coined it]. Perhaps its corollary is that you probably do not need to post a reply to every post on which you have an opinion. List readers often complain of being annoyed by reading most of a quoted post followed by "right on!" or some such reply. If you have a reply, make it a substantial one: tell subscribers why you think it is such a good (or bad) idea. Add your point of view with cited facts (not just opinion) whenever you can.
5. If you are answering a question posed by another subscriber, it is often a good idea to send your answer to that subscriber rather than to the list. If the question was of interest to most readers, and your answer is also of interest to most readers, then direct your answer to the list. When you do answer to the list, be sure your answer is substantial. In a busy list, it becomes very tedious to wade through a number of fairly obvious one-line answers. Assume the person has a rudimentary understanding of the subject matter; and if it is clear that they do not, then that is a signal that you should answer them individually, perhaps with a reference to the FAQ or other introductory material that will point them in the right direction.
6. If you ask a question, request answers be sent to you at your individual e-mail address, and indicate that you will post a summary of the answers when you have them all in hand. [Then, don't let it slip]. Although this reduces the immediacy of the distribution of the answers, it also keeps redundant and very specialized answers from cluttering the list. The summary, when it comes, is a more-or-less complete answer in a single post (convenient for filing by those directly affected). For questions of wide general interest, the summary is then also a good candidate for posting in the frequently-asked questions (FAQ) file. [Remember that you are receiving a favor from other readers when they send you the answers to your questions. Your opportunity to return the favor is to prepare a timely, well-prepared and complete summary of the answers.]
7. Be sure your post is signed with your name and e-mail address. If your post is garbled in any way that loses or mangles your "reply-to" header, nobody has any way to reach you. Moreover, some mail handlers (curiously) hide the e-mail address of the sender when the message is distributed by a list. If you provide your e-mail address as part of your message, then a backup is available. A signature file is useful for this purpose; and it should be included in every e-mail message to a mailing list. (Note: The detailed steps for creating a signature file are available; and they are written for those not familiar with creation of plain text files).
8. In any posting to a mailing list, be sure to turn OFF any request for a confirmation or acknowledgment of delivery that your mailer allows. These confirmations (also called "confirm reading" or "confirm delivery" options) create a monumental annoyance to mailing list administrators. There is hardly a quicker way to reap scorn or get yourself dropped from a list than to ask for a confirmation. In fact, for your Internet e-mail generally, turn off the confirmation request option. Every mail handler is different; some can handle it; some cannot. And it doubles the amount of e-mail traffic for very little return. It is about like sending out every letter at the post office by "return receipt requested." You would not want to impose that on anybody unless it was really necessary. Just rely on the reply to your e-mail to confirm that the original message was received.
9. Before replying individually to any post, be SURE that the "To:" address is NOT the mailing address of the list, but rather the individual to whom you are responding (see above).
10. Do not post advertisements. Most e-mail users are more annoyed by it than you might think. If you have some information that could look like an ad, check the welcome note and FAQ for announcement or endorsement guidelines, or (as a last resort) be in touch with the list owner about your post before the fact. Announcements or endorsements that are free from hype are often acceptable; but they need to be very low-key to avoid offense of any sort. "Tell me; don't sell me" is often the sentiment of experienced subscribers. They want to know about things; they just don't want the hype, or an attempted sales job. See also the section "Avoid Sending 'Spam' E-mail Messages to Anyone" above.
11. Keep in mind that many lists have subscribers in many countries, with many different social norms, different religious, racial, political and sexual preferences, and different styles of humor. You will need to think carefully at times to be sure that your post is not unintentionally offensive or confusing to those not sharing your cultural heritage or traditions.
12. Don't send attached files in a message to be posted to a mailing list until you have checked whether it works or not. Some list servers can handle it ok, of course. Others just ignore the attachment. Worse, some list servers are really fouled up by attached files. Don't give yourself and possibly your employer a bad name by doing it without knowing how it will work out. Find out who the list owner is, and ask him. But check the FAQ first, there will likely be something in there about attached files.
13. If your post is a reply to another post, quote a little piece of the post you are replying to in your post. See the section "Replying and Replying with a (short) Quote" above.
14. Always include a signature file in your posts to mailing lists. There are always new subscribers who do not know you and your affiliations yet. (Note: The detailed steps for creating a signature file are available; and they are written for those not familiar with creation of plain text files).
.
15. WARNING: Keep in mind that there is virtually no way to stop any kind of an Internet post once you have sent it. You can't "undo," retract, recant, renounce, repudiate, withdraw, call back, stifle or suppress it; and you can't "cover it up." It is just gone (and it will be "out there" for a very long time). Theoretically, the list manager (or any forum manager) could intercept it before the listserver broadcasts it; but in practice you will be very hard-pressed to find a list manager who will even listen to your plea for a recall. The only time to think, re-read, re-consider (and perhaps calm down, take several deep breaths, or re-read from another point of view) is before hitting the "send" or "upload" button. Once the message is broadcast there is not even a theoretical way to recall it, of course. Worse, every recipient has only his or her sense of goodwill to keep from distributing it further, holding it up to ridicule, etc. And, if all that weren't bad enough, there are organizations who make it their business to archive newsgroup, mailing list and other postings (and often to sell lists of names and e-mail addresses harvested therefrom). How long will it be until there is a forum "Life's Embarrassing Moments" (or worse) that features all the embarrassing posts of every sort that they can find?
. This may be one of the best reasons, by the way, not to compose "hot" responses in your e-mail client's editor. Ask yourself how easy it is to hit "send" by mistake. Ask yourself how often you have done that. Either leave out the "To:" address while composing, or use your text editor instead. When you have something that's safe to send, then enter the "To:" address, or copy the message from your text editor to your e-mail client's editor, or hit the "upload" button. [Then, re-read it again before you send it. :-) See also our caution on privacy, especially the section on "records."] . And while we are in "by-the-way" mode here, another thing to keep in mind about posting to mailing lists or newsgroups or any Internet forum is that it virtually guarantees that your message will be kept "alive" for a very long time. It is often easy to think of a comment, made more-or-less in passing, particularly one made in response to a claim by another subscriber, as being somewhat akin to a comment in any conversation: pertinent for the moment, and then forgotten. Remember, however, that most mailing lists and some other forums have archives of historical posts that are kept substantially forever. Remember also that inasmuch as your message goes to lots of subscribers (at least hundreds, and perhaps thousands), it will be in in-boxes (and therefore logged into in-box queues) in lots of places. These in-box queues are backed up on every machine that holds your message. I encountered a log of messages on a desktop computer not too long ago that still had messages from 1991 (!) because the person did not know how to purge it (or even that such a thing might be necessary). Heaven knows how many backup files those messages are on. The point here is that sometime in the future you will be pleasantly (or perhaps not) surprised when somebody dredges up a message you wrote years ago, have forgotten about entirely, and on the subject of which you have changed your views completely over the intervening years. It is tough enough to be repudiated in an argument; but when your opponent can quote YOU, it can be seen as quite ridiculous. . In case you want to check two interesting possibilities in this area, here are two businesses who will snoop around and see what others are saying about you or your business or your brand name. One is Cyber Alert Internet Monitoring and the other is Cyveillance. Hey, this is the Information Age. And there is no shortage of outfits who will do this sort of thing in less than ethical ways, too. .
16. It is worth the effort to be seen as a team member on a mailing list by following the rules. Keep in mind that some mail handlers have what are called "filters" or "kill files." When the owner puts your name on his/her kill file, any in-bound message with your name is deleted before it even gets into the mailbox. About the second time he is really annoyed by a message from you or your employer, he might even put the entire domain name in his kill file. Then nobody's mail will get through. We don't want to be painted with that brush under any circumstances.

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Mailing Lists - Vacation Messages and Closing your E-mail Account

1. If you subscribe to high volume mailing lists, your mailbox could become full while you are on vacation (see above).
2. When this happens, your mail handler starts "bouncing" all your messages back to the senders. In most mailing lists, these bounces are directed back to the owner. And all your messages are bounced: not just the messages from the high-volume lists. As you might imagine, it is more than a little tiresome to be running a list in your spare time, and having to deal with bounces from people who have not even thought far enough ahead to unsubscribe or hold their messages while they are away.
3. A similar thing happens if you leave your employment without signing off from your lists, and your erstwhile employer subsequently deletes your e-mail address. Since you then become an "unknown addressee," mailing list messages start bouncing. Furthermore, after your e-mail address is deleted, only the list owner (or other privileged operator) can unsubscribe your name, because most list servers are configured to accept list commands only from the e-mail address you used when you subscribed. Don't be the one who visits that on the head of some poor volunteer list owner. Signoff all your mailing lists several days before you leave, at least. This gives time to respond also to messages from a few lists you forgot about. Of course, this can happen any time you close an e-mail address, whether or not it relates to your employment.
• Signoff lists first; close e-mail addresses second. :-)
4. If you have a problem with mail volumes filling your mail box, switch to the digest edition (above), or see if your system administrator will cache the posts for access by everybody at your installation. This tends to be better received by sysadmins when several people at the installation all want to subscribe to the list.
5. If your mailer has a "vacation message" or "out of office" option, be very careful that you know how it works. Typically, it is an option to automatically send an out-bound message (or reply) that is triggered by any in-bound message for you while you are away. The out-bound message (often called the "vacation message") simply states that you are on vacation at the moment, sometimes indicates when you will return, and may even refer callers to others for satisfaction of immediate needs. Some handlers will only send one single vacation message to any caller (no matter how many messages they send you while you are away). Others are not so well-mannered. In these cases, every message from a mailing list will trigger a "vacation message" response. That would be bad enough by itself. In some cases, however, the message is sent to the mailing list, where the list server thinks it is a new post for all the subscribers. It duplicates it dutifully and sends it to everybody on the list ... ... one of whom is you. In an instant you have created what list managers and owners call a "vicious loop." Most list servers can handle these problems by noticing that the messages are repeating without changes. Others do not handle them well at all. In every case, many people are annoyed. Don't use any kind of vacation message unless you are dead certain that you have signed off all your lists first. It is a very efficient way to make enemies big time.
6. In a related vein, be very careful of using automatic forwarding filters or options on your e-mail account if you are subscribed to mailing lists. If you want some mailing list distributions at some other address, either forward them manually, or else just sign off that list and re-subscribe at the address where you want it delivered. The problem with automatic forwarding is that when there is a problem at the ultimate address, the mail is bounced. There is nothing surprising about that, except that when the bounce gets back to the mailing list owner (who is a volunteer, doing this out of the goodness of his/her heart, remember), the bounce shows an address fault for an address s/he does not have on the subscriber list. Now the poor list owner has a problem with bouncing mail, and s/he has no idea where to start looking for the culprit. Please don't be the one who visits that on the head of some poor volunteer list owner, either.

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Mailing Lists - Finding and Subscribing to them

The CataList Reference Site by L-soft International describes thousands of public lists out of many more thousands of LISTSERV lists, and can also be browsed by size (number of subscribers), country, topic, etc. It may be more up-to-date than some other mailing list indexes.

Search engines will no doubt return other useful sites in response to a query such as "Mailing Lists."

Most mailing list descriptions are far from ideal in helping you to decide whether or not to subscribe. Partly this is because everybody is a volunteer, and nobody has time to write a nice description. Partly it is because everybody is a contributor in most mailing lists, and therefore the subject matter (and certainly the emphasis) tends to shift with time and the current interests of contributors. You may also be interested to know that most lists have seasonal content shifts which relate to how busy the contributors are. What you saw in June, for example, may be quite different from what you will see in September when all the academics, at least, start a new school year. The only reliable ways to find out if you can benefit from a mailing list is to subscribe and read the posts for a few weeks, or to examine the archive of recent posts.

Upon locating a Mailing List whose purpose suits your needs, subscribing is fairly easy. Generally it consists of sending an e-mail message to the Mailing List Server leaving the subject line blank, and with a message (starting in the first character of the first line of the body) such as:

 subscribe LISTNAME Yourfirstname Yourlastname

 if it is a LISTSERV or LISTPROC server, or with a message such as:

 subscribe LISTNAME

if it is a MAJORDOMO server. If you foul it up, but have the mailing list server address right and the "sub" of "subscribe," the list server will typically send you some suggestions about subscribing correctly. The description of the Mailing List which is returned from any of the mailing list data bases above will also contain subscription instructions. Remember when subscribing to a mailing list that your subscription request is going to be processed by a computer. Not starting in the first character of the first line of the body of the message, or including your signature file, or including any other comments or questions will only confuse the software.

There is a caution, however, about subscribing to Mailing Lists. Keeping track of the addresses of the servers, the mailing lists and their owners (which are all separate, but easy to confuse), and knowing when to send a message to the server, to the mailing list or to the owner (or sometimes even the manager) can be taxing for new Internet e-mail users. Furthermore, sending a message to the wrong address can be embarrassing to you and/or annoying to others. For those new to Internet e-mail and Mailing Lists, see the section on Mailing Lists above. For those new to e-mail, you may wish to review our Caution on Privacy before doing much of anything with e-mail or other on-line services.

You may also wish to keep in mind that the subscriber list for most mailing lists is public information. On most lists, you can conceal your subscription, but you need to take specific measures to do so (and most subscribers do not do it). The welcome message will usually detail these steps. If you conceal your subscription, then those who locate contacts by that means will miss you, of course.

Mailing Lists - Signing Off or Unsubscribing

The general form is to send an e-mail message to the mailing list server (whose address is in the welcome note, or in the help file) with the command "unsubscribe" or "signoff" and the name of the mailing list (and sometimes including your name or e-mail address). There are several forms; and you need to get the right one from the list's welcome note or help file.

If you were signed up for a mailing list by a "friend," then see the section "Coping with Unwanted Mail" below, particularly the paragraph on unwanted mailing list subscriptions.

The big thing is to suppress the impulse to write to the list owner and ask him/her to sign you off. S/he is a volunteer, who is running the list in his/her spare time and who does not need the additional work either.

Mailing Lists - Starting Your Own

That's the up-side.

The down-side is that it can also become a monumental source of grief, especially if the list topic is interesting to a broad spectrum of subscribers. It can make or break long-standing friendships; and it can change your life in fundamental ways.

The notion of list "ownership" is changing in important ways as global information exchange becomes a popular means of interaction. In the not-too-distant past a list owner was king of the mountain. It was his "baby;" and he did whatever he liked ... more or less. Anybody who wanted to start a competing list with a slightly different charter was welcome to it. The latter is still true, of course; but ownership is gravitating more and more toward the body of subscribers now. They always were the owners of the content, of course. But now they are being seen as having a greater entitlement to control of the list, its operations and its charter.

Most new lists go through fairly predictable phases. (See "The Natural Life Cycle Of Mailing Lists," a classic from Kat Nagel (1994) that talks about some of the social aspects of mailing lists). There is the initial enthusiasm, lots of posts and lots of new subscribers. After a few hundred subscribers have joined, inevitably some sort of disagreement arises and is hashed out. Also inevitably, somebody becomes rude or makes personal attacks, and a whole bunch of subscribers opt out (often many of the best contributors, unfortunately). And sometimes the offending subscriber(s) is(are) ousted. Then the list either slowly dies, or comes to some sort of equilibrium with the remaining subscribers, and on a more subdued level. Moderated lists can defer the fight phase to some extent, of course. In some (so far, rare) cases, list members who have been ousted from the list have threatened to sue the list owners. I don't know of any suit that has actually been tried; but even the threat can be unsettling. As one harried list owner said, "... and the tormentors have pretty much fallen to just wondering why we're willing to do all of what we do for free. And ya know ... I don't know if there's a real good answer for that." If nothing else, this evolution of ownership will add interest to the life of a list owner.

The best advice I can offer is to be sure you talk to lots of list owners before you start. And subscribing to a list or joining a newsgroup or other forum for list owners to see what they talk about, what the problems are, how they are resolved, etc., might be a good eye-opener.

• Mauri Collins and Zane L. Berge have posted an excellent page at the University of Northern Arizona entitled "Resources for Moderators and Facilitators of Online Discussion," which provides a very good list of materials for prospective list owners. Although the title indicates that the page is aimed at moderators, it deals effectively with moderated lists, list ownership and management, and un-moderated lists as well.

• "Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail," is a Rand Corporation classic by Norman Z. Shapiro and Robert H. Anderson, dating from 1985. It contains a section "Acting as Coordinator/Leader of an Interest Group" which has some helpful editing hints, and also contains a section describing "The Phenomenon of 'Flaming'" which will be helpful if you are new to e-mail and mailing lists.

• Bill Harris of Facilitated Systems has posted "Online Facilitation for Inperson Facilitators" (Mar, 2000; 7 pp; PDF format) which discusses some of the differences between hosting on-line and in person discussions.
• "Online meetings share common elements with inperson meetings. Those elements can be used in ways online that give them more productive power."
• "[T]he important part remains aligning the meeting design and execution with the meeting purpose and group culture."
• "Individual dialogs aren't necessarily quicker, but you can run multiple conversations in parallel without confusing people. That lets you work faster overall. Inperson, those side conversations tend to interrupt progress."
• "Inperson, we are limited by the number of words that can be spoken in the time allotted to a meeting. That limits the number of ideas to consider and keeps us from becoming overloaded. In asynchronous, online events, we can have multiple streams of textual and graphical information coming our way, seemingly without limit."

• List-Managers Mailing List - a web page describing this mailing list "for discussions of issues related to managing Internet mailing lists, including (but not limited to) methods, mechanisms, techniques, policies, and software (in general; questions about specific software packages should be directed to the mailing list dedicated to that particular package)." Alternately, to get the information letter via e-mail, send an e-mail message to {majordomo@greatcircle.com} .. [direct e-mail] Leave the subject line blank, and enter the line below, starting in column 1 of the first line of the body of the message. Then, delete your signature file, etc., and send the message. Their robot will send you the information letter by return mail.
• info list-managers.

• Jakob Nielsen (web design and usability guru) has posted an item on Mailing List Usability (Aug, 2000), which covers lots of points for new (and established) mailing list owners.
• "Mailing list content must be ultra-short. Provide separate email addresses for subscribing and unsubscribing and include info on how to get off in every mailing list message. Improved usability increased subscriptions by 128% in one case study."

• "Email Universe" says it is an open, unmoderated discussion list for the benefit of list-moderators. It is a gathering place for list- moderators to share their experiences and wisdom, and for newly appointed list-moderators to learn the trade. Discussions which would be on topic include techniques and tools to assist moderation, how to deal with troublesome posters, encouraging a particular list culture without appearing too authoritarian, how to spot posters attempting to use and abuse the system, text-layout styles for newsletters, etc. Subscription information is at the above website.

• Two articles by Anita Blanchard, who has studied virtual communities, why they are formed and how they are maintained may be of interest. Both articles shed light on the loss of nonverbal, social and other interpersonal communication cues through e-mail use, the early theories about which were called "cues-filtered-out" theories. They predicted that "participants in CMC could not maintain relationships because of the medium's inability to convey an awareness of the presence of others and the lack of other important social cues. The development of virtual communities was thus quite unexpected in light of these theories." [The quotation is from the Blanchard Paper "Virtual Behavior Settings: An Application of Behavior Setting Theories to Virtual Communities."]

• Nancy Baym's very readable interview, "Bonding by modem," deals with the distinction between groups and communities, on-line and off-line communities, how disagreements are handled, the sociality of participation in on-line communities, etc.

• The Mailing List Gurus Page is on-line as of January, 2000, with sections on Mailing List Managers: Getting Started, Mailing List Managers: Day-to- Day Management, etc.

• Brian Edmonds at UBC maintains a list of mailing list service providers. Some of these providers do not charge. Some charge very modest fees.

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What Does Access to E-mail and Other Internet Postings Mean?

Global communities of interest have been assembled through use of mailing lists, electronic bulletin boards, chat lines, blogs and other discussion forums, Internet Usenet or Bitnet Newsgroups, etc. Traditional communities of geographic proximity are augmented by these communities of interest, where hobbies, medical conditions, professions, athletic and sporting news, automobiles, movie and video heroes, political and religious leanings, and virtually any other interest are discussed and debated with world-wide perspective and participation. A posting in an Internet Newsgroup, for example, may be read by tens or even hundreds of thousands of individuals from among the 30 to 100 million (or more) Internet subscribers within a few hours. These communities of interest are formed substantially without regard to geographic proximity or political boundaries. And in the foreseeable future, if costs continue to decline and accessibility continues to expand, the only limits will be the levels of interest themselves. The associations thus formed are without precedent for humanity, and promise great potential for cooperative problem-solving, skill exchange and unified action. These dynamic communities of interest may be long- term or short-term as associations are formed to meet particular needs, and dissolved when they are no longer pertinent. Traditional communities, formed by proximity to employment, will become communities of choice as increasing numbers of people relocate near centers of recreational, family or creative interest rather than near centers of employment. Increasingly, telecommuting will become an important enabler favoring both desirable employment options and desirable living locations.

The exchange of e-mail messages, participation in mailing lists, bulletin boards and Newsgroups, and the browsing of information on the World-Wide Web stimulates intellectual interaction unlike any that humanity has seen to date. Print and broadcast media have traditionally provided a degree of one-to-many intellectual transfer, but very little interactivity. Because of their large and relatively heterogeneous audiences, and because of the financial requirement to please both sponsors and larger and larger audiences, only relatively low levels of intellectual sophistication have ever been reached. In these processes, scope is inevitably narrowed. There are also many people, who, by nature are not skilled participators in traditional social interaction. Some of these will emerge as significant participators or even leaders in these associations of intellectual interaction. When these abilities for intellectual interaction are carried out in communities of interest which are very specialized (but can ultimately contain a great many of those like-minded people from around the globe) the potential for creativity and unified problem solution rises substantially above what is otherwise attainable. In the foreseeable future, it may be possible to form a community of virtually all the persons on the planet who share a common intellectual interest. Global learning and understanding could be profoundly affected by the debates, conclusions and actions of such a community.

The Rand Corporation has released an extensive research report "Universal Access to E-mail: Feasibility and Societal Implications," a summary of which is also available. Their conclusions indicate that e-mail should be made universally available in the U.S., and that such an effort would have a solid democratizing effect throughout the developed world.

"Predicting E-mail Effects in Organizations" has been posted by the "First Monday" Internet journal (about). In the 2000s and beyond, "electronic mail (e-mail) will be a pervasive communication medium creating new possibilities and having unforeseen consequences in organizations. This paper attempts to predict e-mail developments and subsequent issues in organizations. System designers and managers need to look beyond the efficiency and productivity gains of technology to second level effects in order find the primary e-mail issue for organizations with the continued expansion of global telecommunications networks." The section "Looking Ahead at E- mail and Organizations" advises systems professionals "to treat the user of an e-mail system 'not merely as a customer or client of information services, but also as a processor or co-processor to be integrated into the system design'."

How to Cope with Unwanted E-mail (often called "spam")

These are big problems in the Information Age. The Internet was made for easy exchange of e-mail messages; and e-mail addresses are easy to find. Unfortunately that makes it easy for others to send you messages which may be annoying or worse. These messages, by the way, are often called "spam," and the activity is called "spamming." This label is applied to the full range of unwanted e-mail messages, from off-topic mailing list posts to the most offensive materials.

• The following are informal suggestions for information only. They are not legal advice; and none of them is recommended or endorsed by me or anybody.

Although you can follow the steps below for any unwanted messages, your pleas for help will likely fall on deaf ears in the case of unwanted advertisements, chain letters, etc. Advertisers will soon tire of sending you invitations which you ignore; and service providers can spend endless hours trying to track down and discourage every new advertiser who pops up.

If your problem is that you were subscribed to a mailing list you do not want, see the steps above for vacation signoff procedures, and follow them. If you do not know about mailing lists, it is time for a crash course: see above. And, as a last resort, locate the mailing list owner (one of three important mailing list addresses) and ask him to unsubscribe you. He will expect you to have tried to do it yourself first, however.

When the messages are very offensive, and when simply ignoring these messages does not work, you may consider trying some of the additional steps below.

One potentially helpful initial response (which requires you to set aside rule number one above, and which requires a good deal of patience) is to make a copy of the offending message.

• Whenever you make a copy of an e-mail message, by the way, be sure you copy all the headers. The headers are the "To:," "From:" and "Subject:" lines (and others). Most mail handlers only display a portion of these headers in the routine case, so you have to turn them all on (or ask for "full headers") before copying the message. [Look in "Options" or in "File | Properties" for ways to change how the headers are displayed.] Other mail handlers, even though you have turned on full headers, will only copy the message (or only the message with abbreviated headers) to the file. My mailer is like the latter. What I do is to turn on full headers. Then I highlight or select all the headers and the entire message and copy it to the clipboard. Then I go into my text editor, paste the whole thing into a text only file, and save it (as text only) to a file. Most of the full header text is incomprehensible to us neophytes, by the way; but they contain important information.

In lots of cases, your message to him will bounce. Most spammers and many advertisers deliberately disable their "Reply To:" and return addresses so that replies are not delivered to them. Some spammers even forge some unrelated return address so that any replies go to that person (and often annoy them too). In such a case, just keep a copy of the bounced message when it is returned to you. It contains lots of important information about the "bounce" that will come in very handy later.

If your mail reaches him (or at least does not bounce), but has no apparent effect, a helpful next step may be to write to the postmaster at his Internet Service Provider (ISP) asking for help. If the offender's "Reply To:" e-mail address is:

• donkey@provider.com

• postmaster@provider.com

Another step you can take is to enlist the help of your own ISP. Here again, there is likely a postmaster there who might help.

If your e-mail address is:

• SensibleUser@good-provider.com

• postmaster@good-provider.com

Here again, your purpose is to very politely ask him if he has any suggestions concerning your plight. Include all the pertinent copies mentioned above, and also your message (including any reply or bounce) from the postmaster at the offender's ISP. Frequently, your postmaster knows the offender's postmaster; and even if the latter apparently ignored your message, your postmaster may be able to reach him. Often, they have worked together to solve other problems in the past.

Your ISP may have some suggestions concerning changes to your e-mail address. Keep in mind that such a change might attract a fee, and that you will then have to send messages to all your correspondents notifying them of the change. Furthermore, any message sent to you at the old address will then bounce, with no forwarding information. That is what you want for the spammer; but likely not for anybody else.

As this problem increases, thoughtful ISPs will develop services to trap these unwanted messages, and forward you only the messages you want. These services will likely be priced well above plain old e-mail services, however, because they will require a lot of manual maintenance to keep them current.

Finally, if all of the above fails, you can take the contents of your file (printed on hard copy), and go see your lawyer. He may have some suggestions for further action.
 

Related Thoughts:

• At times you will see services offered that claim they will end your spamming nightmares. Be careful of engaging these services. Some of them put your name and e-mail address on lists sent to spammers asking them to stop sending messages to these people. All the worst spammers do is to look for names on these lists that they do not already have. Bummer.

• The Anti-Defamation League posts some suggested remedies for combating unwanted hate and anti-semitism messages on the Internet. They also provide links to other websites which may contain useful information about unwanted or inappropriate e-mail messages.

• JunkBusters offers some ideas for dealing with unwanted ads, etc., too.

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Translating E-mail Messages in Foreign Languages

Links to E-mail Guides, etc.

1. Kaitlin Sherwood has written a breezy Beginner's Guide to Effective Email which is an easy read and very informative to the new e-mail user.
2. Virginia Shea has posted "The Core Rules of Netiquette" [cookies (cookie caution)] which provides a helpful overview, written for the general reader and new Internet user. Albion's "Netiquette Home Page" [cookies (cookie caution)] provides links to more advanced e-mail topics. The Albion publishing website [cookies (cookie caution)] has "been greeting and orienting new Internet users since 1993."
3. The HTML Writers Guild posts "The Netiquette Guidelines" which includes the usual suggestions plus an "Actionable Rules" section (giving reasons for suspensions, being barred from posting, etc.).
4. Heinz Tschabitscher has posted a Guide to E- mail [cookies (cookie caution)] with links to further sources.
5. Hoax-Slayer posts a good section on Email Security - Safe and Secure Emailing, and a host of other items on e-mail and Internet use generally.
6. The Rand Corporation has released an extensive research report "Universal Access to E-mail: Feasibility and Societal Implications," a summary of which is also available. Their conclusions indicate that e-mail should be made universally available in the U.S., and that such an effort would have a solid democratizing effect throughout the developed world. "Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail," is a Rand Corporation classic by Norman Z. Shapiro and Robert H. Anderson, dating from 1985. It has a relaxed and balanced tone, is written for the general reader and well worth the time, especially for those new to e-mail.

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Auto-Responders, Mail Robots, Mirrors

 Auto-responders are used to provide sales information and to answer frequently-asked questions much as recorded messages are used via telephone, and as auto-fax-back systems are used in facsimile transmission systems. They run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; they don't take lunch or coffee breaks; and they always answer immediately. As an example, BestNet posts a page that describes their AutoResponder service. Many such services are available, of course.

HTML Mail Format.

If you discover that your mail client can handle HTML Mail Format, be careful not to use it (or Rich Text Format) in a posting to most mailing lists. It can really rankle some list owners. See the section "Using Rich Text Formats in E-mail Messages" above. Of course, if your mail client can read and display HTML Mail Format messages, then you may also be able to create messages in HTML to send to your friends. When you do that, be sure their mail client can handle it first. Otherwise, what you have sent will look mostly like nonsense to them.

E-mail Zines (Magazines)

Internet Access via E-mail

...Methods to access FTP, Archie, Gopher, Veronica, Usenet, WAIS, Finger, Whois, and even the World-Wide Web via E-mail.

If your e-mail is more reliable than your web service, Web2Mail will regularly e-mail you a web page so you can watch for changes.

FAXes via E-mail

... thus avoiding toll charges and improving reliability.

David Strom Inc. [cookies (cookie caution)], posts a table "Internet Fax Technologies" [cookies (cookie caution)] which lists a dozen or more e-mail and web-based faxing and voice mail services, along with notes, pricing, etc.

E-mail and Enhanced or Secure E-mail Services via the Web

Additional information is available at each of these services' websites.

Footnotes

[2] Listproc, or ListProcessor, was described at the no longer available website "ListProcessor Version 6.0c Owners Guide Manual." Sorry.

[3] Majordomo - n. A person who speaks, makes arrangements, or takes charge for another. The chief steward or butler in the household of a sovereign or noble. From the Latin "major domus," master of the house. ... Return to text.

See also: The Rand Corporation's extensive research report "Universal Access to E-mail: Feasibility and Societal Implications," a summary of which is also available. Their conclusions indicate that e-mail should be made universally available in the U.S., and that such an effort would have a solid democratizing effect throughout the developed world.

See also: "Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail," a Rand Corporation classic by Norman Z. Shapiro and Robert H. Anderson, dating from 1985. It has a relaxed and balanced tone, is written for the general reader and well worth the time, especially for those new to e-mail.

See also: Rand Science and Technology Issue Paper: E-Mail Communication Between Government and Citizens: Security, Policy Issues, and Next Steps. "Modern network technologies--particularly electronic mail and the World Wide Web--offer the potential for significantly enhancing communication between government agencies and their citizen clients. Because much of the communication between governments and citizens involves the transmission of sensitive information, however, the full potential of these new media will not be realized until means are developed for secure interactions."

See also: The Harvard Business School Publishing website posted a light reading piece "The Ten Commandments of E-mail: How to cope with e-mail overload and more" which is unfortunately no longer available, and which contained a number of good points:

• Thou dost have several choices.
• Thou shalt never print thine e-mail.
• Thou shalt never send e-mail when furious or exhausted.
• Thou shalt never substitute e-mail for a necessary face-to-face meeting.
• Thou shalt never delete names from thine address book.
• Thou shalt never forward chain e-mail.
• Neither shalt thou pass on rumor or innuendo about real people.
• Neither shalt thou do so about companies thou workest for or may workest for one day.
• Thou shalt remember the hierarchy and keep it sacrosanct: First the meeting, then the phone call, then the voice mail, then the e-mail.
• Thou shalt send nothing over e-mail that must be error-free.

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