Is anybody out of the office today?

Dear List Owners,

It would be great if you could provide everyone
a few pointers on how to keep the signal-to-noise
ratio high, e.g. some details on avoiding

	- autoreplies and duplicate messages

	- illegible in-line "attachments"
	  that have to be later resent
	  or put on the web and linked
	  in a new message to the list

	- distracting control characters and 
	  illegible bits of message headers
	  which should be either not sent in the
	  first place, or failing that, should
	  be parsed and filtered out.

I guess FOSS researchers on this list outnumber coders/hackers
who prize text over html and would not be caught dead e.g.
putting mis-MIME'd content inline with human readable text
due to some subterranean interaction between mauled mailers
and list management software.

Traffic patterns on this list seem to suggest a working
hypothesis that FOSS-inclined IT researchers face certain
challenges in the day-to-day usage of means of electronic
information handling - an impression which, albeit just
possibly not falling wholly outside the broad realm of
factual accuracy, I'd rather make an effort to counter.

I thank you in eager anticipation,
& best wishes to all!

Filippo Cattaneo
(shamefully using a nonstandard
and ill-behaved Microsoft mail client)