Rick Hillegas wrote: > Hi Jean, > > I think that sometimes there's is no substitute for a response from a > particular individual, perhaps because of their expertise or keenness > for some issue. Somehow you have to cut through the blizzard of Derby > mail which buries all of our mailboxes. I don't see the point in being > coy about whose feedback you're seeking. To my way of thinking, naming > someone in the subject line is preferable to back-channel communication > and also to losing your query through the cracks. I have seen this > technique work on other large mailing lists. Sometimes you get a > response from a colleague telling you that the person you're trying to > reach is on vacation or otherwise unreachable. That's useful to know.
Hi, Rick, By focusing on a single individual are you likely to miss other potential contributors who might be lurking? I don't think the subject line needs to be coy -- if it's carefully worded to convey what the post is about people with that interest will naturally be drawn to it -- and you might find some contributors emerge that you didn't expect. Currently there are 238 subscribers to derby-dev (see http://people.apache.org/~coar/mlists.html#db.apache.org). Carefully worded subject lines also make searching topics in archives easier. And if somebody isn't available, that's all the reason more for the subject line to not be exclusionary. > I understand your concern about people feeling cornered, but I think > that's part of the price you pay for being an expert. Personally, I > don't feel put off by these direct pages and I don't feel excluded from > responding if I have something to say. Also, I am not a big fan of > addressing people in the third person or through other indirection. We directly address each other a lot in the body of our posts -- and I think that's fine. It's the direct address in the subject line that I find jarring. -jean > Both approaches (direct paging and indirect fishing) can be off-putting > in their own ways. I don't know how to fine-tune this, particularly > given all the warmth and emotional cues we lose by communicating through > email. > > Regards, > -Rick
