THE DATA MONKEY SPEAKS...

Net Etiquette

It is important to remember in emailing to any listserve (not just this one) that there are usually many other users who may have email "situations" which are quite different from your own.

Other users may have very old very slow computers.  They may have limited memory space.  Or they may have poor internet connections.

Some users may have their email through services that require them to pay by minute, or even by message!  (I was recently staying at a hotel where the lobby computers charged me 20 cents a minute to read email on a very slow machine which took over a minute to load each page.  Yargh!)

Some users have email only at work, where their employer may frown upon excessive non-work-related correspondence.

Some users may have an extremely high volume of email correspondence *in addition* to what they receive from Room 41.   This may be because they use their email in their work (such as teachers who receive student assignments electronically), or they may belong to *multiple* listserves and newsgroups.  (I myself receive mail from 3 other listserves including a Shakespeare list with 2000 members which sends at least TWO HUNDRED emails a day.)