Re: Help! Help! I'm being misread!

[Faith Weber <weber -at- EASI -dot- ENET -dot- DEC -dot- COM>]

Matthew, if it helps any, I understood you the first time. Then
I started seeing the responses, and since I'd deleted your original
message already, I thought I was losing it and I'd misunderstood
your message. The longer I work in this field, the more often I
think: "Boy, communicating effectively is tougher than I thought!"
(especially on email, where a lot of people have tons of messages
to get through and therefore read them quickly . . . )

I think the point is that a questioner who brings up a topic that
may not be of burning interest to all members, or a topic that might
result in a flood of similar replies, has the option of asking for
direct responses which (s)he will then summarize to the list for
everyone's convenience.

This option isn't necessarily best for all cases, but it could be
useful for questions that ask for fairly concrete answers rather
than opinions. And of course it depends whether the questioner wants
to make the effort of essentially conducting a survey and compiling
the results. But it's nice to remember that we can do this if we
want to!

By the way, I find this list very enjoyable and useful. Although
the messages do get thick at times, there's also a lot of good info
in there if you're willing to sift through them. I'm also happy
to know this resource is available next time I have a question!!
I've been using similar kinds of resources to get information about
various software tools, etc., for work, and IMO, it's about the best
way to do research short of trying the software yourself.

Faith Weber
weber -at- easi -dot- enet -dot- dec -dot- com