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 <ttmrichter@gmail.com> (GoogleTalk: ttmrichter@gmail.com)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science - the one that heralds new discoveries - is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." (Isaac Asimov)