The Sole Purpose of a Batch Mailing List

Mailing lists have been one of the most used mediums of communication asides from personal e-mail, snail mail, mobile phone and home telephone. For the past few days, there was a stir in one of the Yahoo! Groups where I belong to. Maybe this has been designed for spreading announcements (which is the common notion) with just a few clicks. However, some of us have forgotten that the utmost purpose (underlying purpose I must say) of the mailing lists is to foster friendships whether it is long distance or not. Because of what has transpired recently, I have witnessed that its underlying purpose was defeated.

In a mailing list (as in mailing list of a batch), is where you would want to share what’s-been-happening-to-you or what’s-been-keeping-you-busy news lately. You share it whether that they would care about it or not. In a mailing list, you could simply talk about anything under the sun, be it a good movie that you’ve just watched recently, a good book that you would want the others to read, a restaurant that you’ve discovered recently, issues in politics, or a bad day that you have just gone through.
Mailing lists should foster friendships. If you’re impatient about receiving tons of e-mail whether you think of it as worth reading or not, I guess this is not for you. Before I end this post, below are the house rules of the mailing list.

1. Use proper subject heading.
For example, if you have something to announce be it a garage sale, event or a job opening, use

ANNOUNCEMENT: whatever you want to put here

If you have an invitation to make such as birthday parties, and reunions:
INVITATION: whatever you want to put here

2. Avoid sending chain letters.

3. When sending e-mails that were forwarded to you, edit the subject heading accordingly.
If you think that it is profound:

[worth reading] whatever the e-mail is about

If you think that it is something funny:
[funny ito promise!] whatever the e-mail is about

4. If you think that the e-mail you received from the mailing list is not important for you. It is best to just keep it to yourself in order to avoid debates that could break the group apart.

5. Never call an e-mail a trash mail even if it does not concern you. It is not polite to call an e-mail a trash mail.

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