Including the previous message/Digest choices
Mary Sue Ittner (Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:18:13 PST)

Hi,

Even after my request please not to include the previous message
recently, this is still happening. And I got a couple of private
responses from people who are unhappy when people don't include the
previous message as they don't know what the person is responding to.
The compromise to this is to include ONLY a line or two from the
previous message, but not the whole message. One person pointed out
that some people may not know how to do this. In many email programs
if you highlight the line or two you want to keep in your message and
then hit reply, that is the only portion of the previous message that
is displayed.

A few people have suggested that it is helpful to create a filter and
a folder for the pbs messages so that they go straight to that folder
and if you don't have time to read them, especially when there are a
lot of them, it will be easy to find them later.

One person who received the digest asked if there could only be one
digest a day. Most days there is only one, but when a lot of people
post or a lot of people include the whole previous message with their
response extra digests are triggered. If we set it so there is only
one digest a day some days when there had been a lot of posts the day
before the digest would be very large. So I wrote to the digest
subscribers and asked what they would like. The responses are still
coming in, but so far the majority wants to keep it the way it is.
But there are many who would prefer just one digest a day. You can
all help by not including the whole previous message. Also you can
help by responding privately to people when what you have to say
isn't really necessary for everyone to read. Anyone who posts a link
or a picture loves to get feedback, so I don't want to discourage
that, but please thank that person privately for example instead of
replying to everyone.

And I remind everyone that it is possible to set your email so you
won't get mail if you are very busy or going to be away and just read
messages from the archives.
http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php#Archive
If there is a message you read that you want to respond to, you can
reply from there. You just have to remember to reset your email later
if you want to get mail again. If you can't figure out how to do
this, you can contact one of the list administrators through the
Pacific Bulb Society website and we will help you.

Mary Sue