Am I the only person in the world who doesn’t like email lists? I’ve subscribed to various lists over the years – on cats, literature, politics, languages, pens, professional issues etc. When I first started I used to happily follow threads and engage in discussions and banter. But invariably the deluge of emails would become too overwhelming to even try to keep up with – and the many names attached and all the RE: RE: RE: RE: … too confusing. Who said what, and when, and then I would end up unsubscribing.
And where there’s discussion, inevitably one subscriber will take offense at what another has sent to the list, there is an exchange of words, some subscribers rise to the defense of one side or the other, there’s much bitching, and some unsubscribe in disgust, and then we all go along merrily once the dust has settled. It’s all very tedious and predictable, and I’m not even talking about deliberate flame wars here.
Right now the only lists I don’t find annoying are completely moderated, announcement-only lists, or very task-oriented lists (ie all the subscribers are there to discuss some specific project).
Using Bloglines to subscribe to email lists has been good, because at least none of the email from lists gets into my email accounts, but I usually end up unsubscribing even in Bloglines, because I still don’t manage to keep up with high-volume lists and end up marking whole stacks of messages as read – and what’s the point of being subscribed if you never read any of the messages?
Am I just being churlish?
Categories: email
15 Comments
Not at all! I found myself in the same situation and don’t subscribe to anything any longer. Too much to read and not enough time to read it all, plus the flame wars got to be a bit much. Not that I’m innocent of fanning said flame wars or even starting them on occasion. =)
No, you are not being churlish at all. I have the same reasons for disliking e-mail lists. Too much too read, most of it pedantic or petty, so no sense for me to bother. I do have a list or two I follow which are strictly announcements, but anything that involves people yakking and fanning their egos, I can do without. Best, and keep on blogging.
Nope. Steven Cohen is well known for his dislike of email lists 😉
I’ve found the number I am subscribed to has dropped dramatically in the past couple of years, as a lot of the information I used to get from them is on blogs now etc. I also don’t post as often as I used to.
I subscribe to all my lists through Gmail. Gmail groups discussions together (except when people change the subject header for no reason) so I can delete a whole discussion in one swoop if it doesn’t interest me.
As these lists are away from my work email, it saves that address from being cluttered, and I can ignore Gmail if I want to.
I’m not a fan of email lists. Too much noise to the signal – not just spam or trolling, but people talking about things that I’m not interested in. That, and the fact that on a lot of lists the old timers know each other well and there are a lot of in-jokes (good for them, less good for the casual reader).
I love email itself as a tool, though. But instead of email lists I prefer bulletin boards. Easier to follow.
I love it when, in the midst of a particularly bad flame war, there’ll be a sudden flurry of “unsubscribe” messages sent repeatedly to the list address rather than to the command address. Then you get the parallel flame wars of people making fun of the people who can’t get themselves unsubscribed. It’s quite an amusing way to spend a lazy Saturday morning.
Seriously, though, I think I might put up with email lists better if I didn’t feel like the most inexperienced person around. I’m much more likely to post on my blog or in someone else’s blog comments than I am to write an email. There’s no logic to it, but there it is. I’m intimidated by email lists. So I lurk, and eventually unsubscribe.
I am not a big fan of RSS (and email). I agree with you, it’s just hard to keep up with all the information even in Bloglines. Maybe I am old-fashion, I still enjoy viewing blogs one by one at the IE viewer.
Forming, storming, norming.
Someone, in the middle of a list debate about how one should get one’s baby to sleep, very wisely pointed out that groups are created, rub the rough edges off and then get on with it….until the next storm.
Our work email lists now come complete with spam. Urgh.
It’s like gardening. You start off wanting a bit of everything, then it all grows out of control, so you start pruning things back every now and then, but even that’s too much effort, and eventually you just raze the whole lot down and concrete over the lawn, and watch the weeds come up anyway.
Nah, you’re not being churlish. No more than the rest of us anyway 🙂
Wow, I’m not alone!
Mickey! You, flaming?! ;P
Angel I couldn’t agree more! Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
Hey Fiona! (reminds me, I want to email you about something) My problem is a pathological inability to ignore email – as long as it’s sitting there I feel like I have to do something with it, and just deleting it feels like admitting defeat… Better not to invite the critters in at all…
Hiya Simon 🙂 I don’t mind bulletin boards (gaming boards can be very amusing) but they are still tough to follow – who said what and when can be hard to work out at times, if there are lots of posts… By the way, I have been meaning to ask you, do I need to sign up as a subscriber to comment on Valis? (can I sign up, I mean?)
Iris, I know what you mean, some lists are so full of insider jokes, it’s practically hopeless if you’re a newbie to work out what they’re all on about… but never mind, we now have blogs! Yay! 🙂
Hoi, I reckon I am the world’s biggest RSS fan (hmm is this the subject for another post?)! How did I ever survive without using it?
Sirexkat, you guys spam each other?? But yeh my work email is the worst for spam, everyday I have some 150-200 spams trapped in my spam folder. The Boss reckons I should go through each one (to make sure it really is spam), but I refuse… I’d rather put up with an abusive phone call from someone demanding to know why I haven’t answered their email (inadvertently deleted – hasn’t happened yet, anyway), than sully my eyes scanning through all that crap…
Toxicpurity, you haven’t visited our place yet, have you? That’s the description of our front yard to a tee… 😀
After I discovered Gmail, I started subscribing to email lists, ‘cos Gmail just organises similar threads together. I think it’s not email lists per se, but how they are presented.
I have to put in the alternative comment and declare my addiction to mailing lists. I have radically pruned my lists down from the 50 or so at their height in the mid-late 90s, down to a bare handful now (and carefully split between work and hobby lists), but I love them. They’re active – nay, interactive – and balanced in their importance. And the flame wars are actually part of their charm (I must really love conflict … ) … instead of the nasty comments being carefully pruned from the blog comments, they’re the last bastion of learning-to-think-before-you-speak. When a mailing list comment is out there, it’s OUT there, and you have to deal with the consequences.
On the other hand, my addiction to mailing lists might be an old-style ‘net (pre-beta, non-Web) addict clinging desperately to the outdated remnants of an old communications paradigm being inexorably and unwillingly swept away by Web 2.0. 🙂
*thinks* Nah. I just like mailing lists 🙂
Ivan, I have to agree, Google makes lists a bit more tolerable. (Just a bit, mind you.) Google groups is also quite a neat way of looking at list messages…
Hi again infoaddict! (So when are you going to update your blog/come and play with us at lint? 😉 ) You are the second devil’s advocate/alternative view in the comments this week! I think you are, as you put it: “an old-style ‘net (pre-beta, non-Web) addict clinging desperately to the outdated remnants of an old communications paradigm being inexorably and unwillingly swept away by Web 2.0” But that’s okay. That’s the beauty of email lists, one can always unsubscribe 😛
Heh. I’m Oul Skool. Qool. 🙂
Given the time it took me to remember I was simply commenting on this conversation, actually putting stuff on my blog/s tends to Get Too Hard :). Actually, I’ve got a couple of hard-hitting, insightful, somethingorotherish blogposts waiting around in a couple of textfiles to become a little more coherent.
Ok, ok, and for me to actually get on and post the buggers.
See, I tend not to start conversations. I’m very fond of contributing to them, though. I’ve been commenting all through the biblioblogosphere (when DID we stop saying that with an ironic twist to our mouths??) and having fun with stuff about gender politics and representation and sexuality and all the other threads of conversation, but haven’t made my own posts …
And that’s one major reason why I like mailing lists … it’s not so obvious that you actually don’t start conversations all that often …
Infoaddict, have you been using CoComment? I’d love to be a sticky beak and see your comments strewn across the (biblio)blogosphere… 🙂
I don’t know what a CoComment IS. 🙂 I, too, would love to track all the comments I sprinkle, like native pepper, all around the countryside … I really must sit down and catch up with all my blogs’n’stuff. I actually possess two. Plus managing two forums, a wiki, a couple of websites … and five email addresses.
Only the emails get any kind of a workout, though 🙂