Tooo many messages on this mailing list?? How to avoid being swamped ...

users
#1

Hi :slight_smile:
A good way of reading this mailing list is to use either GMane or Nabble.
It seems those routes allow people to avoid getting emails directly and
just pick the threads that interest you, perhaps even subscribing to just
those threads. I prefer Nabble because it gives the extra functionality of
being able to upload files that the mailing list can choose to read or
not. I'm sure GMane has other advantages to suit other people's
requirements.

There's always the rather neat method of setting up a new email account
with GMail or one of the other free providers and to try to use only it for
just mailing lists. I have a tendency to accidentally use the wrong email
address or to slip into using such things as my main email address which
kinda spoils that option for me.

Another option is, of course, to add filters to your existing email
account. Those can move the emails "en masse" to a sub-folder which you
can choose to dip into at whim and ignore for the most part.

There may be other ways too.

This mailing list used to have hundreds of posts per day and it was my
first experience of such high volumes so i had to learn quite quickly.
Other people may have experience with even higher levels or/and on other
lists and may have other tricks to cope.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#2

Hiding away your mails helps a lot.

#3

reading with my standard iMac email client set to "organize by Conversation", and this bundels all mails of one thread into one entry, so, after the discussion tread calmes down (does not pop to the top of my unread email list anymore) I just delete the whole thing in one go.
I'm sure other mailers have the same functionality.

Just my solution, but it works for me :slight_smile:

Regards,
Rob.

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
+1
Most email clients have such threading. Thunderbird, Claws and Evolution
do. "The Bat!" (for Windows) does. Gmail is not really an email client as
you tend to create a new email address to use it, but it does the
conversations/threading thing by default too.

Hotmail (that's an MS one right?) and Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo don't.
Well, Yahoo might by now but the Micorosoft ones haven't caught up with the
rest of the world yet.

I found that moving from unthreaded to threaded was a HUGE help. Before
that i'd been struggling with every single email!! A complete nightmare.
Now i can see the whole thread/conversation and which issues have already
been dealt with and which issues could maybe do with a bit more work. It's
drastically cut the amount of emails i write :))

As with any new system it took me a while to work it out and a little
longer to really start benefiting from it. Much the same as when i took a
touch-typing course, initially my speeds plummeted but quite soon after i
was really glad i'd made the switch. When i finally managed to get all my
emails being pulled into my GMail account it really "polished off" my
migration. At first i "kept all the email on the server" so they were
still in Yahoo and being duplicated in GMail but once i was confident (took
me about a week) i switched that around so that they get deleted from Yahoo
if they make it into GMail. I still have my Yahoo account but i rarely
ever even sign into it except to change the password and just check.

I'm not saying this to advertise Gmail. Many, many email systems have this
functionality. The main thing is to move away from total reliance on
Microsoft ones by using any of them.

I suspect that a lot of Alexander's problem with this mailing list is that
he is still stuck on Hotmail.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: