It seems that some people have a problem comprehending how internet mailing lists work. It's all really very simple - you subscribe to a mailing list (almost - but not quite - all mailing lists require you to be subscribed in order to send posts to the list), then you start getting the messages that other people have sent to the list. Eventually, you post a message, and EVERY subscriber (yourself included) gets a copy of this message, which the mail list server has sent back out on your behalf (with your email address on them even).

Several problems crop up when someone thoroughly unfamiliar with email sits down at a computer and deems themselves capable of using the internet because they've discovered what button to push to send a message.

Before long, they'll annoy many people with bumbling moves that shouldn't even be witnessed by one's family, much less potential clients and lenders of free assistance spanning the globe. They'll send attachments to lists. They might start with sending an attached sound file, or a picture (both of which they probably downloaded from someplace they could just as easily post a URL to), they might turn on the VCARD setting in their Microsoft mail client (which sends those "business card" attachments on EVERY email, which NOBODY at the receiving end does anything with short of deleting the masses of them which accumulate on their hard drive), and then they'll discover that they can send messages in different fonts and even colours, which are difficult to read at the other end (2 point cyan on white, are you on 'ludes?), which are totally unsupported by more than HALF of the email programs currently in use on the internet, and which don't mesh well with listserv digests and many email-to-web archiving engines.

They'll follow these achievements by emailing everyone they know -- or more correctly, every email address they can find, which includes a great many people they do not know -- some warning about a virus their neighbour's cousin's ex-wife forwarded to them. When they do this, they'll be sure to include EVERY forwarded message header, and will carefully ensure that EVERY email address they send it to is cleartexed in either the TO: or the CC: field, thus ensuring that everything which applies to the listserv commentary below will apply to their chainletter.

They'll get an irate response or two from this achievement, and since it can't possibly be THEIR fault that they didn't check the many sites on the web which debunk hoaxes and other old news, they chalk it up to the person who got annoyed simply being an ass.

Well, now that we've sent about a dozen emails (to about three thousand people), we're ready to join a mailing list and increase the carnage. After trying several times unsuccessfully to subscribe to a mailing list, they finally get the listadmin to help (often because the user tried mailing TO the list several times, and it bounced to the listadmin, who after a few of these, decides s/he needs to clue the person in to how it works, even though the instructions are clearly posted on a website where anyone can read them provided they have third grade or better reading skills).

Oh kewl, we're now on a mailing list, with an audience of thousands (plus all the people who will some day read the list archives on the web - including your future prospective employer who may search for your name on the web to see what they might find about you -- I am not kidding). Now, rather than hanging out for at least a few days (if not MUCH longer) to get a feel for how this community operates and who the key players are (those would be people you don't want to piss off, and include system and list operators as well as key contributors whom the list population may hold in high reguard) it strikes you that you should send a few test messages, because you know if you had a microphone and a teevee camera pointed to you on national network news, you'd introduce yourself to the audience by saying:

testing... please ignore

Cluetime: intelligent folk can come up with some pretty decent message fodder for a test message -- from "new member introduction" or "how my day was", to a valid technical question or contribution (all as per the nature of the list -- high volume and highly technical lists couldn't give a rats ass if there's a new member -- contribute something meaningful or ask a question, but don't get personal unless someone invites you to).

Now that your asinine test message is out of the way (or rather, the approximatley half dozen you will probably send), you know that everyone in the list can see what you post. Several people will have already told you as much, using colourful adjectives and action-inspiring verbs. You are ready to start posting to the list -- you will choose to post followup messages to about every message you see on the list, convinced that these people are actually sending YOU email, because otherwise it wouldn't be showing up in YOUR mailbox.

After a while of posting replies to everyone (usually without any merit), you'll be overwhelmed by the number of posts people make (especially as other people subscribe to the list and learn to post just like you). Now, you'll take a stand and start asking other people to not post so much because you don't have the time to reply to it all - perhaps they could send their messages to the list and not to YOU.

At some point, you or your company will decide that putting about 20K worth of text at the BOTTOM of every message you send would be a good way to provide legal protection for your company against idiots they may be employing. That .sig will contain a bunch of babble about "this message may contain privledged or sensitive information", "if it has been incorrectly addressed, please notify the sender immediatley", and "do not misuse this information". Oh boy. These statements hold absolutely NO legal weight - they're just annoying, and brand everyone at the company as morons who apparently cannot be trusted to address a message correctly. If the company wants to protect confidential information, they should investigate using public key signing and encryption. PGP is a well-respected application in this field. Messages which are confidential should simply be encrypted to the recipient(s) public key(s). If the message is inadvertently addressed to the wrong address, no confidential information has been leaked (aside from perhaps the email addresses of other recipients and the subject line itself). This addresses other things as well: the authenticity of the SENDER is verifyable (by merit of the message being cryptologically signed), the completeness of transmission is encapsulated in the fact that if the message is incomplete, the encrypted block will not decrypt successfully, and (this one is sweet) - if you typically sign messages, then viruses transmitted through your account would arrive as UNSIGNED messages, and therefore automatically be suspect by anyone regularly corresponding with you.

Consider the following, not uncommon, scenario:

Someone posts a question on a mailing list. This happens many hundreds of thousands of times every day, all over the world.

Many other people get that message delivered to them (because they're subscribed to the mailing list, and that's what mailing lists do - deliver messages to everyone who is subscribed to them). A handful (or less) of people within that list elect to reply (and we can assume that if you're reading this because I gave you a link to this page, I was one of those people). Those replies also go to the mailing list, and are redistributed to the subscribership.

Following this so far?

Okay, now someone else decides to follow up. They do one of four things:

1. Reply to all, which sends their reply to the mailing list, AND the author of the message to which they are replying (that'd probably be me right now). Now, one copy goes straight to the author, and the other goes to the list, to be delivered to everyone, including the author who's already graciously received a copy.

2. Reply to just the author (aka "offlist" reply), most often with material intended for the list or the person who posted the original request (but NOT the user to whom this person just replied to who had posted the previous useful response _to the list_), and more often than not, bearing absolutely no usefulness to the person they replied to anyway.

3. Posts a totally separate line of questioning, using either of the above two methods, usually not changing the subject line, and being careful to include all of the previous message traffic in the unrelated message they are replying to. This is what lazy morons do to post a message to a mailing list instead of simply typing the list address into the TO: field of their email client. These people often don't understand why they get ignored on technical lists, but I'll offer a clue: in the self-help world of the internet, nobody wants to waste their time explaining things to a moron who is incapable of grasping the basics of email. Master your email before you move on to bigger things, and DO NOT expect people on mailing lists to act as instructors for how you use the internet.

Your mother called, and would like me to remind you to not run with sharp objects.

4. Autoreplies with a message stating "I'm out of the office for two months, you can contact my friend's assistant at 555-2027" (nearly invariably, when provided, the phone number lacks an area code). This of course gets everyone who actually participates on the list fed up in a hurry. The folks think they're cool and important because they have an autoresponder, and the bright ones even have it responding to EVERY message they get - including the ones their autoresponder sent to the mailing list in response to the last post. These pillars of IQ seem always to set up their autoresponder IMMEDIATLEY before stepping out the door on a Friday night, ensuring that no-one can actually get anyone to turn the damn thing off, which puts the gearheads into the position of either 1) forging an unsubscribe for the person, so they aren't on the mailing list any more; 2) mailbomb the idiot; or 3) deliberatley set up a mail loop (such as forging several messages FROM the idiot, so that their own autoreply replies to them, to which their autoreply replies to them...). Cluetime: if YOUR address isn't in the TO: field, *NEVER* autoreply to a message. Further, ensure that you filter out mailing list messages BEFORE you process autoreplies. This stupid move is so prevalient on some mailing lists, I've dedicated a whole page to covering it.

Let's take a side trip, shall we?

Those of us who handle hundreds of email messages a day (on a typical day, I get over 600 email messages), tend to migrate to good email clients early on, those with features like mail filtering and message flagging, etc. Well, a good indicator that you should pay specific attention to a message is when YOUR address appears as an addressee (especially TO:). So, you can have filters that flag these messages, so that if you don't have time to read EVERY message, or you need to prioritize which ones to get to first (because of course, you have work to do), you can at least migrate to the ones that appear to demand your attention (after all, who but a inconsiderate person would send a message TO: you if it wasn't something you should be reading - SPAM excepted, and already filtered out anyway by those who handle volumes of email). Well, that's what happens for me -- my busy day gets interrupted by some induhvidual who starts a chain reaction of people who for some unfathomable reason feel compelled to continue to CC me on their mailing list posts, even though not a single one of those messages has ANY bearing to me.

What do I mean by chain reaction? Well, now that the bright person has CC'd someone on their reply to the list, OTHER bright people reply to THAT reply, and do one of the above things as well, ensuring that the poor fool who offered assistance in the first place is innundated with crap from people who don't know beans about how email works, and usually ignore requests to curb their useless CCs.

TidBits has an article for users of Mailing lists which makes explicit mention of the annoyance of unnecessary CC'ing. The various other points, as well as those in Mailing List Manners 101, are good reading for those who don't have a thorough understanding of email and listservs in specific.

It is this author's personal policy to take those individuals who can't cope with their email and add them to his server killfile (which means your email will be REFUSED by the mail server, and when you eventually have something you really do need help with, I won't be hearing about it).

If you've been directed to this page because of a CC'ing incident, consider yourself warned. Continued ignorance is no excuse.