Re: Help! I've got 744 unread messages!

Simon Kissane wrote:
>
> I am only a newbie to the conlang mailing list. For the first few days I
> could handle the message load, and I managed to read everything. Then I
> went overseas for a week, and have been busy at school since, so now I
> have 744 unread messages. I don't think I will be able to read them all
> in a lifetime!
Ok... Let me see if I can help. I get on the order of 270 messages per
day from 2 high traffic lists, about 5 low traffic lists, and personal
mail. That is to say, I get the volume of mail you are lamenting every 3
days, give or take.

The secret is that you don't have to read them all. I'd do nothing but
read mail if I read all the messages I get everyday.

>
> There is a lot of interesting discussion going on, but there also seems
> to be a lot of 'Me too!' postings, and fifty people giving reasonably
> similar answers to the same question.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions of how to sort the interesting
> discussion from the piles of electronic excreetement?
Mail filters rule. For example, I am currently deleting anything with
GROUPLANG in the subject. NGL posts get sorted out into the NGL folder
before they hit the conlang filter that keeps all the conlang stuff
sorted into its own folder.
Also, try sorting the mail different ways before you start reading. Sort
by subject, date, and author, and see what works best for you. Once you
get into the groove, you can delete a lot of the crap without actually
reading all of it. A quick skim is all you need. Maybe try flagging the
posts you are actually interested in, or just deleting all the stuff
that you know you aren't interested at first glance.

The other way to avoid unsightly CONLANG build-up is to go to a digest
version, where you get all the days posts in one neat package. The
downside is that it is a very large package.

Hope that is helpful...
Mia