>Submitted to veg-raw by: Shawn Luca <[log in to unmask]>
>Is there a possibility of getting a digest form of this list?  I really enjoy
>reading the messages, but they seem to be starting to pile up.  A digest
>form may help keep our mailboxes uncluttered.

I had this same complaint a month or two ago, and a digest mode would most
 definitely be appreciated. However, in the meantime it dawned on me there
 is an alternative solution for those of you with commercial versions of the
 most popular email programs. If you have an email program like Eudora Pro
 on the Mac or Pegasus on the PC, check out the filtering feature. I didn't
 realize one could do this until I upgraded recently from the shareware form
 of Eudora which lacks the filters.

Perhaps many of the rest of you are still in the same boat I was with no
 filtering capability. But if you have filters, you can simply have your
 email program automatically slot postings from different sources into their
 own mailboxes. (Normally with email lists there some identifying feature,
 usually the "Reply-To" name or address, you can have the mail filtered on.)

This is actually even better than a digest, because you retain the
 individual subject headers this way, while many digests do not extract a
 summary of subject headers, forcing you to page through all the mail
 yourself to see if you want to read each posting or not.

Also, for those of you newer to the internet making multiple daily posts,
 consider the following two points of tried-and-true "netiquette" for
 staying in everyone else's good graces:

1. It is considered "bad form" to make many small replies responding to each
 individual list posting, not only because it takes up bandwidth but also
 because it plasters your name all over the list subject headings. This will
 quickly get you regarded as a pest, and many will quit reading your
 postings. Solution: it takes a bit more work, but the preferred tack is to
 package up one's various replies into a single posting, and simply indicate
 in the subject header in abbreviated form what individual items you are
 responding to. If you start making more than, say, a couple of posts or so
 a day, you need to consider the barrage-effect and the irritation your
 postings are going to cause others on the list.

2. It's also bad form to insert extremely lengthy reply-quotes of previous
 postings you are responding to, especially when followed by responses of
 only a few lines. Again, it wastes bandwidth plus it will piss a lot of
 people off because it gets old real fast having to page down through reams
 of stuff one has already read, just to locate the new response someone is
 adding. If it's not possible to capture the essence of a point you are
 responding to with a reply-quote of AT MOST 5-10 lines (hopefully towards
 the lower end of that range if not less), then you're trying to say too
 much all at once. People's memories for what has been posted are better
 than one might think--and if they are not, usually a few lines of
 reply-quote is enough to jog them

About a year ago I found a very funny and informative Miss-Manners-style
 satire FAQ of net behavior that will catch you up on these sorts of things
 if you're not yet already aware of them through the school of hard knocks.
 Just ask me for the "Dear Emily Postnews" satire, and I'll fire you off a
 copy. It was originally written with the Usenet newsgroups in mind, but
 most of it also applies to email lists like this one.

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS