Effective Mailing List Participation

By Gurudutt Kamath

Participating in mailing lists for the first time is as heady as your first driving experience. The power of speed and covering distances in a jiffy feels like magic. It is rare that you will drive on your own the first time. If everyone did, there would be heaps of junked cars on each road! Participating in mailing lists is a different story. Most people participate without any instructors by their side. Many cause accidents galore and inflict injuries to themselves and others. At times many are not even aware of their follies.

Can writing emails to mailing lists get you a job in USA? In my case, it did. Jennifer Rush in Guam saw my emails and thought that I wrote "American English" and wondered whether I would be interested in working with her. I got the job and went to USA and continued the job as a telecommuting assignment. Can you cut your chances of a job by writing to mailing lists? Indeed, you can! Imagine your future boss reading your emails on mailing lists. If you have been writing junk, ill-thought of pieces, inconsiderate rants: do you stand a chance? Incidentally, I have passed	ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
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on projects to people who contributed well on lists and have avoided people who wrote poorly or seemed to have an attitude problem.

Email is cheap and people rarely give a second thought while posting messages to an email list or group. People forget (and some do not even know!) that posts are archived! To find out how good or bad you are, someone can just look at the archives. If you write well, you increase your chances of success and if you write poorly, you will be history.

Here are some tips for effective participation in mailing lists and groups.

1. Make Each Post Count

Your post to a list is a mirror image of you. If your post shines, you shine. You can raise the respect people pay you by writing effective emails. Your posts should not show a lack of technical writing skills. Is your subject precise? Are your paragraphs concise and to the point? Have you been accurate, brief, and clear? Imagine a prospective employer reading your post. Will your post tempt the employer to hire you? Or do you come out as a crackpot? Not sure? Read posts that you wrote a few weeks ago dispassionately. That may give you a clue.

2. Listen

Half the posts in most lists are noise! Why? Writers (or should I say so-called writers?) never bother to articulate themselves well. What are they really saying? One has to dig deep to unearth the meaning. Hasty one liners or single paragraphs are common. Technical writers write telegraphese! It is important that you read posts fully and clearly to understand what the poster was really saying. When you respond, make sure that you provide a well reasoned answer to the question asked.

If someone asks a question on numbering in Word, try to answer precisely to the problem at hand. Do not rave and rant about Word bugs or about page numbering (when the question was on paragraph numbering). Being sarcastic or showing off your skills will be of little help.

3. Follow the Golden Rule

Do as others would do to you! Study posts for a day/week or two before you rush into any mailing list. Even in a restaurant or bar, we look at how others behave and adjust our behaviour accordingly. If quiet, we do not holler. If loud, we also raise our voice! If everyone is having fun, we also join in. Or we leave, if the place is too loud or not the kind we are looking for. Yet, in mailing lists, people walk in with blinkers and trip over the furniture, or worse, step over people! Sometimes, the doorman has to throw uncouth people out!

You should also follow the rules of the mailing list or group. Remember to read and understand these rules before you begin writing to lists. Also, do not be beguiled by the fact that all members break rules. You be the paragon of virtue. Set an example by being a model list member.

4. Take Time to Write

Only 5 per cent of members write 95 per cent of the time. Of course, you participate by reading mails (assuming that you do, and the mails are not being stashed away in folders never to be read) to a list. But you do injustice to yourself and others, when you miss an opportunity to contribute your view or help someone with a problem. Others have spent time and effort to help you. Why not help someone too? Take time to write at least one or two emails a week. Ever seen a party, where only 5 people are talking and 95 people are listening? All mailing lists have this problem. Let us ensure that everyone is having a good time. Let the quiet people talk and the loquacious keep quiet, at least for a while.

5. Think Globally and Write Locally

A mailing list embraces the world! So be geography friendly in your posts. When posting job/training ads, make sure that the location is provided in the Subject and the body. If there are restrictions (say, only Mumbai residents), please make them clear. Remember to write for the audience. Send Indian job posts to Indian mailing lists, and technical writing job posts to technical writing job lists, rather than generic lists.

A few mistake mailing lists for hospitals! Even the smallest scratch makes them rush to the doctors. Help! Urgent! My printer is not printing in red! If you have problems, you need to reach out for user manuals, help, and even support. If "hospital" lists are popular because of two reasons - lack of training and buggy software. Use the archives, as the problems would have already been addressed there. There are several mailing lists and groups for tools (Word, FrameMaker, RoboHelp). Join such groups, look at the knowledge bases, or try the various Web sites available for tools.

Effective participation in mailing lists and groups can change your destiny and that of others. Start active participation and make a difference today!

(Gurudutt Kamath is a telecommuting technical writer based in Mumbai . His home page is http://www.documentorg.com/default.htm.)

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