Forgotten E-Mail: "Mailing List Etiquette"

[lazymalevolence]

A little background - I wrote this after receiving three emails from three different people in my mailbox (within the course of about three hours) that contained exactly the same content. I happened to forget that it was in my "Drafts" folder until now. Edited only to look better.

To Whom it May Concern:

I've just about had it with the way iSchool staff use the mailing lists that those that are in the school are "strongly encouraged" to subscribe to. It appears that a significant number of those who post to the lists are not aware of the social norms that should be followed when performing such a task. An example of one such occurrence was Feb. 11, when three different professors forwarded the same email to two mailing lists [1]. Utilizing Google, the iSchool's obsession, a set of useful links to mailing list etiquette pages can be found, but the first of which is sufficient [2]. In reference to the example occurrence, this particular paragraph is relevant:

Should I "crosspost" to multiple lists?

Almost always, the answer to this is no. Most mailing lists are topically disjoint, and there is very little that is equally appropriate for posting to a number of them. It can also be annoying, as usually subscribers will get a copy of your message for each list they're on that you post to -- more than two or three of those and you can have a lot of annoyed people knocking on your mailbox.

That said, there may be some occasional instances where it would be appropriate to post to a number of lists at once. If you think this is the case, then you should probably contact the owner of each list and make sure that they agree before proceeding.

Hopefully, this will enlighten some people as to how to "work smarter, not harder" with regards to mailing lists.

Thanks,

--
Mark Lee
Informatics Major (2005-2007)
[REDACTED EMAIL ADDRESS]