NavList:

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Twitter feed: for those of you who use Twitter, or if you know any other people or organizations that use Twitter that you can bug, you can follow NavList messages at "NavListNews". You get a quick subject and author message with a short link to the full message. It's handy in certain circumstances and a very easy addition if you already use Twitter. This is an entirely automated now, though there may be other occasional messages in the "NavListNews" message feed. The PURPOSE of this Twitter feed is, we may hope, to attract new members with an interest in the subject since Twitter has become such a popular method of receiving small bits of news. Note that you can also add a mobile phone email to your NavList member settings to receive the same short messages if you don't like Twitter (that's what I do).

Email recipients of NavList messages: please be sure to click whatever you need to click to identify emails from "fer3.com" as a "safe" sender. Take a few minutes to locate any preference item, if it exists in your email, that allows you to establish a list of "safe senders".. Also, (and this may sound obvious) if you see a NavList message that doesn't interest you or strikes you as commercial, under no circumstances should you mark it as spam since this will not only tag all NavList messages sent to you personally as potential spam, it will also tag other emails to other members as spam which can then cascade to other email systems blocking messages to many members. If you're an email recipient, and you have any problems at all with messages you're receiving, please feel free to email me personally, and I will address your concerns as soon as possible.

Expressions for NavList: it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but here I go again. Sit and stay! :) I encourage all of you not to to refer to "NavList" as "a list" or "the list". I also encourage you to drop the expressions "on-list" and "off-list". These "list-ing" expressions date from the days when "email lists" were a primary form of interaction on the Internet. About half of NavList members are still email recipients only, and for you, NavList still functions like an old-fashioned email list. But the other half access the discussions through the message boards. It's an interactive community, nothing "list-y" about it, except the name. Old-fashioned language makes the group old-fashioned. When I discuss this topic with NavList members in person, right about here folks ask me, looking a little puzzled, "how can I refer to an off-list message without that expression?" and the answer of course is to use the same language you might use in the real world: it's a private discussion. If you want someone to contact you privately, then just say "contact me privately" or "contact me by email". Why bother with lingo?? Well, because this group is suffering a little from being stuck in the year 2000. Old-fashioned communities do not attract new members, especially younger members. Style matters. It's not a big deal, but it matters.

Creating degree signs in messages: just a reminder, in any message for NavList, sent by email or not, if you include a "d" in square brackets, it's a quick way to get a degree sign (°). There are many other ways to add a degree symbol so if you have some other method you don't need this. Yet we still see people resorting to asterisks. You can get a degree symbol with three easy keystrokes. Just to clarify, here is a "d" in curly brackets: {d}, here is a "c" in square brackets: [c], now put 'em together... and here is a "d" in square brackets: ° (as you read this, it will have been automatically converted into a degree sign).

Blockquoting in messages: quoting is getting out of control again. Some NavList members who participate by email are in the habit of using their email software robotically. If the email software chooses to quote back every word from the last gazillion messages sent in reply in any way in a discussion, then a "block quote" of that gets dumped into every follow-up. It's a nuisance. I will be implementing a software solution to hide all blockquotes larger than a certain minimum size in the near future.

Custom index functions: as most of you know, you can search the whole huge archive of NavList messages by subject, author, and date by creating a "custom index". Here's the direct link: http://www.fer3.com/arc/custom-index.aspx. This function has been much more capable since early December and now lets you specify date limits more narrowly. Also, if you haven't noticed, all messages are now listed in these indices as well as all of the monthly indices and the current messages index with dates and times UT (previously they were listed with local date and zone offset). Date-based searches will find messages starting from 0h UT. Archived messages are listed in a given month more accurately now, based on the date and time UT.

More improvements coming soon...

-FER

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