In your message dated: 25 Jan 1999 09:27:45 +1000 you write:
>"R. Lee Hawkins" <lhawkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> moved upon the face of the 'Ne
>t and spake thusly:
>
>> Finally, please note that I have been forced to switch to the digest
>> version of the mailing list. While I really love the sense of community
>> of the list, the volume that sense of community generates made it
>
>(I was going to send this just to Lee, but I thought that this
>information might help others also.)
>
>If you're getting a lot of email, and you're not using presorting,
>then you're working too hard.
Agreed, but see below.
>
>For those of you who use combined internet tools from Microsoft or
>Netscape, some presorting rules are built into your mail clients. The
>dreaded FM will explain more.
Nope, doesn't apply to me, I use MH-Mail.
>
>For those of you whose mail is delivered to a Unix box, there are
>several add-on tools available. One of the best is a powerful
>filtering/sorting package (which I use) called "procmail".
I use various techniques in MH-Mail to filter my mail. All mail from
sysadmin lists that are post-only (private replies to posts are all that
are allowed, not on-list discussion) go straight to the trash, since I'm
only generally interested in the private replys to my questions. Do I
end up asking questions that might have recently been asked? Perhaps,
but not often, and my job isn't to read and memorize all the mail on
these lists, only to use them to solve problems for my department. They
are tools for me, not a reason for being :)
>
>I receive on the order of 1000 messages per day, and if they were not
>presorted into folders, I would do nothing else but read mail.
It amazes me that you can ever process that much info. It seems like
the archives of your various mailing lists would be more appropriate and
efficient storage places for those messages.
The situation with me and the Oly list, however, is special. Since I
maintain the FAQ, I feel an obligation to at least scan all the traffic
for useful tidbits. I find this easier to do with the digest version.
I'm sorry that my post implied that I was ignorant of mail filtering
techniques: I'm not, far from it. I just had to find a more efficent
means to read the list. The digest is it. If I simply refiled them
into a folder automagically, I'd *never* read them.
Cheers,
--Lee
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