On Fri, 2007-13-07 at 09:35 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
But I wonder if there are also any useful technical tips for users like myself, who would like to be able to keep up, but feel they are gradually drowning?
I have a couple of simple heuristics that are almost universally
applicable to the mailing lists I read or participate in.
1) The longer the thread, the less likely it is that anything useful
can be found in it. I tend to read the first, say, five messages in a
thread and then move on unless there's something compelling in what I've
read in the first five messages or it's a topic I'm actively interested
in.
2) Develop a mental list of people who are "noise generators" for you.
Some people in haskell-cafe, for example, tend to speak miles and miles
over my head. As I identify them, I tend to just pass over their
messages because they really do just add confusion and noise to my
experience. There are other kinds of noise-generators too (albeit
thankfully few in this community!). Same treatment.
--
Michael T. Richter