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Newsgroups and E-mail
"So much information, so little time,"
laments today's Netizen. We all have a bandwidth problem with the Net as we
try to absorb hundreds of information bits a day through what's usually a very
narrow pipeline.
It's depressing enough trying to maintain
legitimate contacts and keep up with useful information without having to
spend some of our precious online time dealing with garbage.
When we want information, we want it now, and we
form impressions about new Net contacts based solely on information content
and presentation. Good information, presented logically and concisely, implies
a professional approach to business. Bad information implies just the
opposite.
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Watch that signature.
Sure, you should include your name, company name, and contact information in
an e-mail or discussion group signature, but skip the space-hogging (and
frequently indecipherable) graphics, quotations from notable people,
long-winded mission statements or expressions of personal philosophies. Most
mailing lists and discussion groups frown on any signature longer than four
lines; some lists now delete any signature longer than four
lines.
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Don't rant.
If you can't make your point in one or two screens, then either your writing
skills need work, you're overly enamored of your own opinions, or you're not
focusing properly on the topic. I've gotten to the point in some discussion
groups where I no longer read posts by certain individuals--not because they
don't have something useful to say, but because they waste too much of my
reading time saying it.
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Don't post lengthy articles.
If you find an information resource that will be useful to a discussion group
or mailing list, post a short excerpt of it and tell people where to get the
rest. Otherwise, you're wasting a lot of time for people who aren't interested
in it: it takes time to download, time to scroll past, and even time to
ignore. If you're participating in a forum on an online service, upload the
article to a forum library and point people to it in a message board posting.
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Use a good subject line.
Describe each message you send or post by using an effective subject line.
Nothing ticks me off more than opening a message with no subject or a vague
subject only to find out it's something I don't want to read. If you believe
your message or post is useful, then you shouldn't be afraid to announce it
with a good subject line.
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