On-Line Community Tools
Like anything in life, however, too much of a good thing is not-so-good …
Listservs, newsgroups and chat rooms belong to a group of technologies I call "On-Line Community Tools." These can allow people of common interests to interact and reach beyond their geographic area for information and support..
E-Mail Listservs:
Remember that Listservs are run and controlled by programs (called listbots). They know and execute a few commands very well, but are not people. When you subscribe to a list, you will get an e-mail with instructions on how to subscribe, un-subscribe, etc. READ this and SAVE this. While requests like "Please take me off the list." are polite, they will not trigger the listbot to do anything except post the message to the group.
If you're going out of town for a time, temporarily un-subscribe, or at least disable your "I'm out of the office, back in a month" reply. This is annoying to listmates and contributes to the clutter.
Just because you GET mail, doesn't mean you need to READ it. If you Get mail via an ISP (i.e. not AOL, WebTV, etc), then an e-mail program like Outlook or Eudora can filter and route mail for you. For example, I Have Outlook and have use the "Rules" to direct all the mail I get into folders. I currently have about 40 folders. I also have a preference set to Notify me with a pop-up window when I get new mail. I can either read it then Or not. When I look at my general In-box, any sub-folders with un-read mail appear with bold lettering. I can then choose which to look at, and then which messages in each sub-folder to read or delete.
Outlook also provide filters for "junk mail" and "adult content". These messages end up in my In-box, then I simply right-click the subject and direct it to either "junk" or "adult". This deletes the current message and adds the sender's address to the list. Future mail from the same address automatically gets trashed.
Practice "Safe Surfing." Viruses are all around us and not actively protecting your computer is like posting a sign saying "I don't value my data." Purchase a good Virus Protection program with e-mail protection and "Live Update" capabilities. Install it, and run it on a regular basis.
Live Update will connect to the manufacturer's website to keep your virus definitions up-to-date.
Un-nest forwarded messages. If someone forwards you an e-mail that Was forwarded to them by someone else, it gets very messy to read. It also shows the e-mail address of everyone who received it before you. Take the time and copy the text to your word processor, clean out the extraneous data (like the ">>" at the beginning of each line). Then copy the clean text into a blank e-mail and send it to the group.
Watch out for attachments. Some e-mail programs attach either a text file version of the e-mail or a "V-Card" to out-going e-mails. These increase the size of the e-mail and adds to clutter. Detach them or, better yet, adjust the preferences of the e-mail program not to do this by default, and only use it as needed.
All e-mail servers (the folks that actually handle your e-mail) have a folder assigned to you with a size limit. If you reach the limit, any in-coming e-mails will generate an error message to the sender. Your e-mail program will have an option to save copies on the server or not.
Set this preference to NOT save copies and this becomes a non-issue.
Brad Ingrao, MSEd, CCC-A, FAAA
Coordinator of Audiology Information Services
HIMSA
2550 University Avenue West, Suite 241 N
St. Paul, MN 55114
e-mail: bingrao@himsa.com
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