Volume 1, Issue 2

November 1997

QCT

Quick Computing Topics (QCT) is an electronic Newsletter published by Computer and Telecommunication Services and Media Services/User Support for CSUB Faculty, Staff, and Students. Past issues will be archived on Computer and Telecommunication Services and Media Services/User Support homepages. Please address any comments or suggestions to: Melanie Butler on First Class, mbutler@csubak.edu, or call extension 2115.

E-Mail Etiquette

Many e-mail users on campus belong to several listserves and get e-mail from many different sources. Some people get 30 or 40 messages a day from people wishing to communicate with them. Frustration occurs when general announcement messages are sent directly to everyone on campus, creating a backlog of messages on the heavy user's desktop and on the FirstClass server. Computer Services recently made some changes to FirstClass resulting in a much quicker response time, however, announcement messages sent to everyone slows the system and uses up large amounts of memory. In response to this problem and others, we submit these etiquette rules.

  1. Carefully consider whether everyone will want to read your message before you send it to all faculty and staff; consider posting it only to Announcements, Suggestions, or Classifieds. Include an accurate message subject line, so that your important messages will be read quickly.

  2. When replying to a message sent to everyone, Classifieds, Suggestions, or Announcements, change the "To:" line to reply only to the author of the message; not everyone wants to get your reply. Better yet, change your reply preferences to "reply sender." For help setting this feature call Melanie at Computer Services x2115 or User Support at x2307.

  3. Check your e-mail daily or several times a day if you get many messages.

  4. Delete unwanted messages immediately, since they take up disk storage space. All e-mail have an expiration date of 365 days. This can be changed on individual e-mail messages by using the "Get Info..." command found in the File Menu. Check all important messages that need to be saved for more than a year.

  5. Keep messages remaining in your electronic mailbox to a minimum. You can save messages by copying them to Word documents and saving them on diskettes, for future reference, then deleting the copied messages.

  6. Never assume that your e-mail will not be read by a third party; your message can be forwarded by the receiver to someone else.

  7. Although all e-mail documents that are received from the Internet are scanned for virus contamination before delivery, never open a document from someone you don't know or concerning something you are not sure about. Serious virus contamination of your desktop computer can happen when opening documents sent by e-mail.

  8. Don't forward messages from the Internet that warn about a new virus. These messages are generally inaccurate. If you have any questions about a new virus, contact the User Support Help Desk at x2307 for the latest information.

  9. Be sure to back up your regular work documents daily onto a removable storage device (diskettes, zip, etc.), so if you contract a virus on your computer you will not have months of work wiped out.

  10. Don't use all caps or all lower case letters. Using all one case letters can make your message difficult to read. Some readers find all caps offensive -- similar to BEING SHOUTED AT.

  11. E-mail is just an electronic letter or memo. You should follow a normal letter or memo format, i.e., paragraphs, capitalization, spacing, etc.

  12. Read your e-mail message before you send it; your message may be forwarded to someone else and grammatical and spelling errors can be embarrassing. FirstClass has a spell check function in the pull-down Edit menu.

  13. Carefully consider your written response to a FirstClass message that seem to "push your buttons." Your first response may be inappropriate and result in ill feelings that are not intended. If a message does upset you, think about it awhile and then carefully craft a response. Often writings in e-mail are curt and interpreted as rude when this was not the intent.

If you are unsure of a feature available in FirstClass, you may call User Support at x2307 or check out the FirstClass instructions on the Web at this site.

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