Mailing List Services

Are there rules when you want to put your two cents in this Discussion List? Posted by Patricia Rountree on September 25 th , 2013 Discussion Lists are based on a group of people of like interests, using email to “discuss” their interests among one another. They are online communities without boundaries. Unlike the traditional announcement list, the discussion list facilitates two-way communication among its members as members can read all posts to the list and can reply to the topic at hand. Internet etiquette for email discussion lists covers acceptable online behavior for group communication: from ones manners to one’s action.  In fact, members or subscribers of most discussion lists expect fellow members to follow some sort of standard set of rules, rules that have been established by the Internet Community and rules that have been established by the list they joined. Rules are in place to keep things orderly: the greater the number of   u

On a properly configured discussion list an unsubscribe footer is always included; usually at the bottom of the post.   The unsubscribe footer is unique to each user and should never be included in a reply. Need to trim List members who are unaware of proper list etiquette may respond to a discussion list post by merely replying, inadvertently copying all the previous footers in the said discussion thread.  Therefore, the List Admin should educate their discussion list subscribers to trim their replies as a courtesy to the other subscribers.  In other words users should be trimming replies of extraneous text that is not relevant to the message topic…including the footer. Take the case of a list member who decided to unsubscribe herself from the discussion list she on.  She replied to the post  she was reading by asking how to unsubscribe from the list.  She either did not see the unsubscribe footer, did not trust it, or wanted everyone to know she wanted to leav