How to handle OT & spam on a mail list

[Dennis Kibbe]

Mail clients, like Evolution & T'bird are not designed to handle mail lists where you receive a large volume of mail that can clog your inbox and which is often off topic.

One way to get around this problem is to read the list with a newsreader like pan or gnus (Emacs). You can do this at www.gmane.org by subscribing to gmane.org.user-groups.linux.phoenix.

A news reader will let you easily "score" articles so those that you want to read rise to the top and those you don't want to read will either sink to the bottom or not show up at all. Articles also "expire" so that your news inbox is self-emptying. Your normal mail inbox is reserved for, well, mail.

You still need to subscribe to the actual list via the PLUG site if you want to post, but you can elect to receive the digest rather than individual posts and then put yourself on "vacation hold" so even that doesn't show up.

If you need to contact the administrator of the list that is best done thought the appropriate email address rather than posting to the list. Requests to unsubscribe and other purely admin matters are handled through this email address which is different than the one used to post or the mailman page and not by posting to the list proper.

Dennisk
-- 
"Free as in Freedom"
Free Software Foundation