The Episcopal Church of Sudan
Coping with email
These are a few thoughts on the correct use of email both within the Province and for external use. None of the "rules" mentioned here are absolute or set in stone; rather, they are intended as a set of guidelines that may help communications to flow more easily.
1: Who to write to
Many mails are sent with a long list of addresses added in either the "To:" box or the "Cc:" one. This can often cause problems.
- The list of addresses may contain one that is intended to stay private
- The email becomes unnecessarily large
- Your message is likely to annoy more people if it is not relevant to them
Please be very careful about who is in your list of recipients. This is particularly the case when you reply to a mail. In a recent case, someone sent a mail giving his change of address. One of the many recipients replied, to say, "Thank You" - but he sent it to every one of the original recipients.
A Rule:
Every address to whom you send an email should be there for a specific reason. Make sure that there are no unnecessary addresses either in the "To:" and "Cc:" boxes or quoted as part of your message.
1a: Mailing Lists
An addition to this rule applies to the mailing lists that are available. When you write a message to one of these, you are already writing to quite a large group of people. You should always write your message to that group alone. Do not add any other address. If you do, your mail will either be rejected or, at best, it will be delayed till a list administrator can deal with it.
In particular, it appears that there is a habit of copying a list message to the original author of a message. Please remember that, if Person A writes to a mailing list and Person B replies to that list, then Person A will see that reply anyway, because he is already a member of that list! There is no need to send him another copy of your reply.
2: What to include in an email
When replying to an email, there is a temptation to include the whole of the original message in your answer. Your software probably puts it in there anyway. It is far better manners to remove anything that isn't relevant to your reply. This will keep your message shorter and (far more importantly) it will make what you have to say far more prominent. In the example shown, (from a Yahoo screen) you can see three addresses - of which only one is necessary. Highlighted in red is a section of the copied mail that is not needed. Use the delete key to clear it away!
A Rule:
If you are replying to - or forwarding - a message, be sure to strip out all unnecessary material.
3: Sending a message to many people
Sometimes you do want to send a message to a lot of people. Fortunately, there is a way to do this without exposing everyone's email address.
First of all - you always have to send a mail to someone. There is one address that they are all going to see - and that is your own, so why not send the mail to that address? You will get a copy, but that is no great hardship!
Now you need to copy it to all of the people who need to see it. Click the link to "Show BCC".
BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy and this will send a copy to each person in the list without showing them the other addresses. The click you have just done should open a new space to add the addresses. Now you can send reasonably secure mails to a lot of people.
A Rule:
If you are sending a mail to more than two or three people who already know each other, then use the BCC box.
3a: Mailing lists
Most mailing lists (and certainly the sudan.anglican.org ones) will refuse a mail if the list name is in the BCC box. Send your mail to that address alone (see Rule 1a).