Framingham E-mail Lists: Managing Message Volume FAQ

There are too many messages on these lists! What can I do?

What is digest mode? Is it the best option for me?

With digests, you get a few big messages each day (usually one) that contain all the messages for that day, instead of getting them as individual messages throughout the day. Generally, you get the digests the day after they are actually posted. You can receive digests instead of individual e-mails by changing an option on your list subscription. If you are a lurker (someone who does not usually post), digest mode can be an easy way to manage the mail volume issue.

If you are a frequent poster, or if you like to want to search earlier posts, then switching to digest mode is probably not the best option. It can make posting correctly challenging. There are two kinds of digests. MIME digests and text digests. When you receive the list as text digests, you can no longer treat each message as an individual e-mail for surgical deletion and other operations. Never reply to a digest. If you want to reply to a message in a digest then you need to start a new message and include only as much of the previous message that you are replying to to minimally preserve context. Please match the subject line to the message to which you are responding.

You can change to digest mode or back to individual e-mails by following these directions:

You'll need your list password to do this. If you don't have it, please see instructions on how to get it.

Go here. Your Delivery Mode is just one of your personal settings. All you need to do is to log in with your password and change the Delivery Mode setting to something else. Your digest choices are the Daily Digest in either text or mime format.

If you want to turn digest mode off, follow the above instructions, except choose each message as it is posted.

Is filtering (or Sorting) a better option?

With filtering into folders, you direct all List messages automatically into a specific mail folder on your computer, instead of having them interspersed throughout your general mail in-box. You set this up in a way specific to your mail client or service (AOL, Eudora, Outlook Express, Yahoo Mail, HotMail, etc). This section will soon contain instructions for setting up filtering into folders on many of the popular mail clients and services.

Filtering into folders is best, if you're willing to take a bit more trouble to set it up. Filtering into folders automatically places all your List messages into one or more specific, segregated places (folders) on your own system or account, as soon as each message arrives. There are just as many messages and they arrive all day long, but they aren't cluttering up any other folder, and there aren't any other messages cluttering them up. You can go look at them in their special folders -- or not -- when you choose.

As a general rule, it is a good idea to have a separate folder for each list that you are subscribed to. If you wanted to be subscribed to 50 different lists, you could do it by filtering your mail, but if you don't filter, not even digest mode will help you.

In their special Frambors folder, you can still work with each message as an individual e-mail, and do things like sort and mark the headers, delete individual messages, and whatever features your e-mail system provides. Perhaps most important, you can reply to an individual post in the usual way.

Another advantage of not using digests is that you can filter out messages from particular individuals, should you wish to. Again, the method for doing that varies with the mail system you are using.

How do I set up mail filtering rules for the lists?

(This answer is in the process of being written.)

Why am I getting duplicate messages?

There are a number of reasons that you could be getting duplicate messages.

One possibility is that you are subscribed to more than one list and that an individual message is posted to those multiple lists. That is not allowed and is likely not an issue.

Another possibility is that someone is sending a message to a list and Cc'ing you. In that case you will get two copies. Then when people reply using ReplyToAll, the cycle would repeat. Please be aware that ReplyToAll can cause problems for others in lists.