Hi folks! Let me take the opportunity of Rainie's questions below to make sure she and any other new folks are able to maximize their use of mailing lists like this and others, such as the groups at yahoo...
Rainie writes: > ... I haven't joined a discussion forum on lyme yet. I am finding I'm > a little overwhelmed just being in this group and the support group. As you are likely to join at least one or two other groups, and may want to receive e-mail from all of them at the same time, it can indeed become overwhelming very quickly if all of this e-mail traffic descends on your in-box in a fire-hose like torrent, all jumbled together with spam and your legitimate correspondence. It is VITAL, therefore, to learn how to train your e-mail system to sort incoming messages according to where the come from, so that each group that you join ends up with its own in-box or message folder, separate from each other. In Gmail, for instance, they use Labels to organize things, and you can set up filters to tag each mail as it comes in according to attributes of the message such as sender, or a string in the Subject: and move it to a Label that you've created to receive them. The label appears in the list on the left along with your in-box, trash, sent mail, etc. This way, you can create a label for each group you join and make sure messages from it are sorted automatically and moved out of your inbox for you. Each system is different. Usually you can do a Google search with the name of your e-mail program or service, and the words 'filter OR sort' and find instructions for doing this. If it is not possible, you should move to a different e-mail service or program. It's that important, I believe. > I [don't know] how to respond. I'm not sure if I should be writing to > you directly or posting here, so for now I'll do both. It's generally the best idea to respond to the group as a whole rather than to the original poster. Thus, when you hit reply, you should make sure that the list posting address, silver-list@eskimo.com is in the To: or Addressee: field of your message. The list server adds a Reply-To: header to each message it sends out which attempts to make replies go back to the list by default. This is occasionally overridden by some folks' e-mail setup, but works most of the time. Which means... if you actually WANT to reply privately to the original author, you usually have to cut and paste or deliberately select their address and possibly delete the list address in order to do so. Forgetting this has sometimes lead to gaffes which range from amusing to embarrassing, so it's a good thing to always be conscious of. The main reason I've set the default behavior this way is to promote the discussion rather than suppress it. If the default was to send replies back to the original author, most threads would quickly disappear into private discussions, and we would lose most of the continuity and spontaneous contributions from others that generally surround each topic. It can be set up the opposite way, and is on lists where severe control over the discussion is desirable, but, by my choice, at least, it's better this way. I hope these remarks will make you a bit more confident of how to work the levers and pull the strings. The facilities on this mailing list are primitive by modern standards, but the skills you learn still apply even to the more elaborate, feature laden group interfaces that are out there. If you have questions about how to manage your participation in the group, feel free to ask me privately or request help from the group. Be well! Mike Devour silver-list owner [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [mdev...@eskimo.com ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com Address Off-Topic messages to: silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com>
