Cohousing-L Mailing List: Topic drift, subj lines and excess quoting

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

May 10th as post  "Common House Use Proposal" immediately
evolved into a "meta" discussion on Rules and "law-free"
with little reference to Common House Use which has upset
some folks.  Here's a list of the number of related messages
under various subject lines:

27  Common House Use Proposal
10  Rules
 9  Law free
 4  CH use rules
 2  CommonHouse use
 2  Common House Use Guidelines

This message is to try and set some guidelines for Cohousing-L subject
lines. Note that I think that tho subject lines are the most important
part of an email message, the nature of mailing lists and email are
such that "Topic Drift" and subject lines that dont reflect the content
of the message  will be a continuing problem.  In that respect it is
like the problem of excessive quoting a bit. But maybe we can do
better.

Most people do not read all of their email and subject lines help
prioritize what gets read. This makes having an informative relevant
subject line important.

So please give some thought to the subject line on messages you post.
If you are initiating a post (not a reply) carefully assign the
subject line.  If you are replying to a message, consider whether the
subject line is STILL informative and relevant.  Especially in the
case of mailing list messages the subject line serves two purposes,
the second being to identify the thread - that is sequence of messages
that are related and part of one discussion topic.  Thus for mailing
lists, ideally the subject line should not change too often.

If the topic has drifted significantly from what the subject line
indicates, consider using a different or modified subject line. If
someone else has used a modified subject line of the drifted topic
that is relevant to your post, consider using it.  Consider using a
subject line that has a "back reference" to the previous subject line
in the form:  New subject [was: Old subject.

Also lately there has been significant amount of excessive quoting...
Please try to limit the quotes to what is eeded to set the context
for your post.  See the discussion last March 14-16 "Trim Your Tails"
in the archives http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l
(Use the --> arrow in upper right to get back a page and search
for "Trim" )  or my summary post back then:
http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg32704.html

Note that I pondered how we could "apply positive or
negative incentives" ** to improve the composition of list posts,
but so far have not come up with anything.  However, remember
folks your words are what people judge you by here, the better
your post (the better the subject line, the better the quoting
style etc etc) the better peoples opinion of you wil be.

** from Eris Weaver's great (IMHO) post in the current "Rules" thread:
http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg32910.html

Recently I came across "Seven Rules to Not Sucking at Email"
http://markosullivan.ca/dont-suck-at-email/
It even has a cute cartoon.  First rule:
"1. Use the Subject Line"

Fred, listserv manager, http://justcomm.org


--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
     Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org         My org:
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