Deciphering TheMouseForLess

When and How to Reply Via Private Email
By Michael Boyer - 9/6/2001

This is a special "Deciphering TheMouseForLess" follow-up to Binnie's recent request to get MFL back on track and cut down on the numerous off-topic, one-liner, and personal posts which unnecessarily bloat the MFL daily postings.

Most MFL members simply hit the "reply" button to an existing message to post a response without even thinking about the fact that that response is going to the WHOLE list. Members have been getting very good at trimming the excess text from their replies, well let's now add one more small step to decide "Who should this reply go to?"

Did you know that the personal email address of the member who sent the post is almost always(depending on your email tool) right there in front of you in the "included" text of the original posting. Check it out, I'm sure you will see it! Once you have located it, you can simply "cut & paste" it from the included email into the "To:" line of your reply and delete the MFL address. This way the reply will only go to the individual and not the whole list!

Now I'm not saying that all replies should be sent to individuals and not the list, but here are some of the guidelines I would apply in deciding which should go to the list:

- MOST IMPORTANT! Ask yourself, Would anyone else on the list really benefit from my response, other the original poster? If your answer is NO, then please do NOT send the reply to the whole MFL group :-)

- Please do not reply to the whole MFL group with one-liner "Thanks", "See you there", "Enjoy your trip", "Loved that" type of responses. You know the kind I am talking about :-) Make it more personal(which I believe is better and more effective) and send these directly to the member involved.

- Please do not reply to the whole MFL group with discussion thread's that are "local" in nature, like discussing local meet plans between two members, or reminiscing about shared childhood memories in a common town or community. Although these types of posts can be uplifting, in a sense, to other members in that they show the strong sense of community we have at MFL, we show that same sense of community just as well through all the other more globally relevant and on-topic posts.

Remember, we do have a lot of contests at MFL and give out contest entries for all sorts of things, but MFL does NOT give out a contest entry for the member with the most posts :-) LOL

BTW, one of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to run a "metric" on which members post the most, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet with what Yahoo provides. I know I'd probably be well towards the top of the list! I save all my posts, and I just checked the email folder where I save them and there are 1330 messages in it from since I joined MFL back at the end of January this year. Boy, I didn't realize just how "prolific"(politically correct term for long winded) I have been on MFL :-)