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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1999 12:48:05 -0500
Reply-To:     Derek Drew <drew@INTERPORT.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Derek Drew <drew@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject:      How To Enjoy The Vanagon List
Comments: cc: Syncro@onelist.com, Tim Smith <smitht@UNB.CA>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

People sometimes ask about how others deal with the varying signal to noise ratio on the vanagon list.

A happy relationship to the list is one in which the list can take up no more than 10 or 15 mins of your time *per month* if do not want it to take up more. It is also one in which you read almost no stupid posts. The material below should probably be extracted and stuck on Vanagon.com because many newbies (do we still use that word?) simply do not know these things, and as a result the Vanagon list appears to be a burden. It does not have to be one.

Here are my Principals of Vanagon List Happiness:

1. DO NOT USE DIGEST MODE. People think that digest mode saves them work because it sticks messages in one big file that they can read. But digest mode actually creates additional work because the messages are not bunched by topic properly, and it is harder to scan them quickly all together.

2. MAKE A VANAGON MAILBOX. This means to use an email program such as Eudora that can recognize that a message is coming from the vanagon list and the program moves all your mail into this mailbox you create specifically for Vanagon mail. The beauty of a Vanagon mailbox is that you never know what is in it until you are in the mood to read Vanagon mail. The Vanagon list creates zero burden on your normal life.

3. READ YOUR MAIL INFREQUENTLY. Try not reading *any* vanagon mail for a week or two. You can even go a month! I think two weeks is the right number. This allows the messages to bunch up, and you can then arrange them by subject and delete all subjects that do not interest you. (see next message)

3. WHEN READING VANAGON MAIL ARRANGE POSTS BY SUBJECT. This is vitally important. In late versions of Eudora, such as versions 3 and 4, you look at all mail in the mailbox and you can click on the subject heading. This makes all the messages arrange themselves by subject. You can then select all 50 messages with the subject line, "List Vendors Suck" all at once, very fast. Hit the delete key. Then find all messages with the subject line "Horray For List Vendors" and hit the delete key. This process can take a very short time until you are left with only those messages in which you have a current interest. I personally read syncro-related posts and posts about the area between the transmission and the motor, as these subjects interest to me.

4. CREATE BOZO FILTERS. This means that if one particular list member annoys you with silly stuff, set your mail filters to send his email directly to the trash bin rather than to the Vanagon list email. You will never even know they existed. If one objected to list vendors, for example, one could send all their messages immedaitely to the trash. I do not do this myself, as I consider their participation helpful and appropriate. But the point is that it is easy to do.

5. DO NOT READ MESSAGES TO SCAN THEIR CONTENT. Many email programs like Eudora and Outlook allow you to view the content of each message as an aide to screening. I view this as a mistake. It is inefficient and intolerable for people like me with time pressures. It will take you a lot of time and you will begin to hate the list. Consider instead screening all your mail by subject heading only. This is the most efficient way to filter it. One other way to filter it is to decide what you are interested in, and then have the filters robot in your email program do the work for you. For example, if you own a diesel, for example, you could even set up a robot to pick up all messages with the word "diesel" in them and then put these mjessages into a special Vanagon List Diesel mailbox. That would become your preferred mailbox.

6. OPTIONAL: CONSIDER CREATING YOUR OWN VANAGON ARCHIVE. I have every post from the Vanagon list since its first day on my laptop. (That's right, I was on the very first day way back in 1994 and have been on every day since.) After messages go in the trash, my mail filter sweeps them away and puts them in a big mailbox named Vanagon Archive. If I wish, I can search this archive with the crude search functionality in Eudora, or use Alta Vista's hard drive search eingine to do sophisticated searches (get the search engine for free from Alta Vista). It does Alta Vista searches on your own hard drive!

By the means I have discussed, I never even see messages saying "You people are losers" because I never select out their subject headings. I am only dimly aware of a recent increase in list traffic with high noise levels. I did notice deleting a lot of posts with silly headings but I would never have found out what they were saying until I noticed Tim Smith bowing out. Since it makes no sense for Tim Smith to bow out, I read his post and found that he was on digest. I would quit the list too if I were on digest, as this is a prehistoric and very onerous method of trying to be on this list. I suggest anybody on digest either get off digest and into a good email program as fast as they can, or get their head examined for why they would stay on the list and tolerate the difficulty of using a digest mode.

________________________________________________________ Derek Drew New York, NY & Washington, DC drew@interport.net '90 Syncro Westfalia... ...seen off-road at http://www.tiu.net/~des/vw/drew/index.html

Also seen at: http://www.pipeline.com/~tforhan/swrange.htm http://4wd.sofcom.com/VW/snow.html http://www.pipeline.com/~tforhan/swmassn.htm http://4wd.sofcom.com/VW/Campers/Campers.html

Note: most valuable Vanagon sites on the planet (for owners) are: http://gerry.vanagon.com/cgi-bin/wa.exe?S1=vanagon ftp://gerry.vanagon.com/pub/


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