I have a gripe that has been slowly festering and it’s gotta come out.
When the most well-intentioned people post their messages on lists, as well as send personal e-mails, the subject line of these MUST be explicit. Posting something with a vague subject line on lists usually means that those who do open them are presented with an irrelevant e-mail and thus waste their time in doing so. Now I personally accept the fact that a better portion of the postings on the Efrat-List are irrelevant to me personally. That’s ok. That’s just the nature of lists and I have no problem deleting these items. The ones that are relevant are so usefull they make deleting the irrelevant ones well worthwhile. I expect that many delete my postings out of hand as irrelevant as well. But what bugs me is that I’d like to know which are relevant or irrelevant ahead of time and would like to discern this from the subject lines. There are subject lines that are often poorly composed and so they actually obfuscate the contents of the e-mails. The following are examples of the same subject line vague enough to apply to a variety of messages, one example below is quite relevant to me and the other completely irrelevant, yet without a specific subject I wouldn’t know whether to open them or not…
Example #1: Subject: “Great Sauce”
Text: “I discovered a great tasting Japanese-style Waxahatchie sauce manufactured by Bald Papoose Packing, Inc, from a store in Givat Shaul and it was simply great!! It has a bezootz hechser from the Admore of Tierra del-Fuego Hassidim which relocated to Micronesia in the 1300s. Unfortunately the store in Givat Shaul ran out and they don’t plan to restock this item. Anyone know where I can buy more of this? Thanks!!”
Example #2: Subject: “Great Sauce”
Text: “Wow! What a day! Just yesterday I got a phone call from a lawyer who said that my great uncle Morris had died – he’s not really my uncle, but rather my wife’s, cousin’s brother’s adopted nephew who was somehow also 5x-removed. (He was the one with the left blue eye and the right brown eye.) Anyway, my wife is the closest heir to him and the lawyer said that he willed his entire estate to her, which includes the entire remaining stock of his great Japanese-style Waxahatchie sauce from his business called The Bald Papoose Packing, Inc, and this stuff is simply great!! This Waxahatchie sauce has a bezootz hechser from the Admore of Tierra del-Fuego Hassidim who relocated to Micronesia in the early 1300s. --- Oh, and just 5 minutes ago 3 huge tandem semi-tractor trailers pulled up to my house with LOADED TO THE BRIM with the remaining cases of this wonderful tasting Waxahatchie sauce which was specially airlifted to Israel straight from his factory – which was just in the nick of time as the building is about to be condemned to make way for the construction of Nevada State Highway #756A, as it is located just outside of the town of Peoche, Nevada, with a population of 59 souls! WWWOOOOWWWW!!!! SO I’M GIVING ALL THOSE CASES OF SAUCE AWAY TO ALL YOU WONDERFUL PEOPLE OF GUSH ETZION, CASE-BY-CASE, ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVE BASIS, FOR ABSOLUTELY FREE!!! ALL OF IT MUST GO TONIGHT AND I’M GIVING IT ALL AWAY!!! COME AND GET ‘EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT!!!!!!!!!”
See what I mean?
This also applies to the subject lines on personal e-mails. I get spam from all kinds of crazy people or organizations and they seem to delight in giving vague subject lines in order to manipulate me to open their e-mails so I can view their garbage. So I’m quite circumspect about even personal items sent to me. It has happened that I have deleted perfectly good and legitimate personal e-mails from well-intentioned people only because I didn’t recognize the name on the e-mail and the subject line was suspicious or vague.
Please! Compose the subject line in a way that will give list-members a serious reason to open them and read their contents!
Dale
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