Hi Polarian,
> > your mails are single-handedly flooding my list mbox - please be
> > mindful of others when interacting with mailing lists, perhaps
> > collate your emails into fewer.
>
> Sorry, however I do not know what I meant to do about this
I'll try to help.
> I compress as many comments into a single email as possible, it is not
> like I send tons of emails
Relatively, you do.
> unfortunately I can not anticipate what people are going to reply with
> until they do, and then I reply back.
Yes, you reply back. That's part of the problem.
You've told us you have autism. I know next to nothing about it but
presume it's influencing you behaviour here. What I see:
- You email with a suggestion for improvement.
- Someone tells you why not.
- You, very promptly, reply with why you disagree with them.
So far, so good.
- Someone else gives you their opinion. They may also disagree
triggering...
- Another, very prompt, reply from you tacking their arguments, which
may not duplicate the first replier's but could overlap with them.
By the time you've had a few people try to tell you why they dislike the
idea, you've replied quite a few times and your points are becoming
repetitive because their arguments are overlapping quite a bit by now.
If I then read the list after twelve hours away, I see a big thread with
you as the main voice and not a lot of progress being made.
How to fix it:
- Don't reply quickly. Don't even write the reply but not send it.
- Wait until more replies may have come in. I'd suggest at least a
couple of hours.
- Do they collectively alter your opinion?
- If so, pick one which made the most impact on you and tell us your
new stance.
- Or pick the one which seems to most intelligently argue against your
case and reply.
- By picking the hardest one to rebut, you will think more about
your case and the list's many readers will get higher signal.
- If a second one makes a completely different argument against your
case then reply to it but only if you think their case has merit.
- It could be the majority of the list's readers can quickly see for
themselves that the reply to you isn't worth much and will not
want to see the two of you battle it back and forth.
- Be content not to reply to everyone who replied to you.
- Quote just the pertinent bits of their email and reply underneath
each.
- This gives context to readers, avoids you having to frame what you
say with extra words, stops you accidentally misrepresenting them,
and keeps their thoughts in your focus as you write rather than it
being out of sight.
- Part-way through, ask ‘Is this worth it?’. It's taking up your time.
You could be doing something else; there's an opportunity cost. It
will take the time of the list's readers to process it. I abandon
quite a few emails once that initial ‘There's something wrong on the
Internet’ has ebbed.
- When you've finished, re-read your email looking for text to clarify
and, better still, text to cut. Burn your time to save your readers'
time by making your case clearer and more succinct.
- Much back and forth can be triggered on both sides by a lack of
clarity: ‘Be precise in your speech’, as someone wrote.
--
Cheers, Ralph.
