Keith, I understand, what you are talking about, and while I do have a 20 gig hard drive in my computer, I also have a number of hobbies and interest. For each of these, I may be on up to 3 or 4 list ( or more ), with a mail box for each, with further break down of boxes for specific info, that I want to categorize. For example: My wife and I share the same e-mail address, so we both have our own separate folders.
Within my folder I have a number of folders to include one for Research, in Research, I have a folder for energy. In the energy folder I have sub-folders for Bio-energy, Bio-fuel, Digestion, Energy Options, Fuel cells, Gasification, Thermoelectric, and Wastewatts. These are all groups that I'm am or have been a member of, or specific types of energy production. A rough total for all of these folders is 8,500 e-mails ( and that is not including sub-folders even within these ), I know for a fact that in another primary subject folder, I have over 10,000 e-mails ( and that is not including the e-mails in over a hundred sub-folders in that general category ). While allot of info is good, stuff that will not be of use three days, a week, a month from now really does not need to be saved. If I know that I will not be able to attend a biofuel making seminar that is coming up next month, why save it when I need the disk space for other things, that will be of indefinite use? If one person post a link to a good web site, I can save space by going to the web site and down loading the page, than saving the post with the link, and the thirty comments that fallow it ( unless there is info wrong on the site ). At times I may receive 500+ e-mails a day ( this is really true if two or more list get a hot topic at the same time ), and if I did not go through and wholesale delete some things that I don't have interest in ( or is of no use to me ) I would run out of disk space in a hurry. If I could, I would crop many of the post I get, down to just the info I need ( like highlighting the relevant parts of a text book ), but my e-mail program won't let me do that ( in fact I don't know of any program that would / could do that ). Greg H. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Addison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <biofuel@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 07:23 Subject: Deleting - Re: [biofuel] Politics and Biofuels > > Not picking on you, lots of people talk of deleting posts - but why? > I know a few people still use low-capacity hard-disks, but for most > disk capacity isn't a problem, with 10, 20, 40, 80 and more gigabyte > disks standard now for some while, and fast machines that handle > large amounts of data in no time. I regularly ask people please to > crop irrelevant stuff (and multiple footers!) from their posts, but > that's to save bandwidth, not disk space, and out of consideration > for members with slow and/or expensive connections (often the case in > 3rd World countries) and perhaps old gear. > > IMO it makes more sense to keep all posts. Deleting them is judging > in advance what you may find useful later, and as an > info-professional of long standing I can tell you that's not a > judgment you can make with any assurance. > > A major advantage of subject-specific mailing lists like this one is > that you quickly build up a considerable onboard information resource > - your own database on biofuels. This list's database is a fabulous > resource, I use it all the time, so do many others. (And it sure adds > a little much-needed perspective to those few who complain that all > we do here is discuss "off-topic political crap", LOL!) You don't > build up much in the way of resources if you keep deleting stuff. > With a computer it doesn't really matter what's there, it doesn't > take perceptibly longer to search 20Mb than 10Mb, and the more that's > in there the more depth and breadth it has, and the better your > search results will be. > > Your email program should be able to do a full-text search of a > mailbox. That is, you create a mailbox for the Biofuel list, call it > "Biofuel", and set a filter to send all incoming messages with the > header "To: <biofuel@yahoogroups.com>" to that mailbox. If your > emailer can't do that, and do a proper search, get one that can. > After a month the mailbox gets a bit full, so make a new one for the > next month and put last month's one in a folder on your hard disk, > which you can search with a full-text search program. > > This mkakes the best use of the information you're receiving, and it > will also improve your experience of mailing lists, and of Internet > communications generally. And it's a lot easier than hitting the > Delete button all the time. > > By the way, your emailer also should be able to sort messages by date > (usually the default), by name of sender, and by subject, which makes > everything much easier. If you don't have a capable emailer you're > getting a keyhole view of what mailing lists are all about. > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
