Re: A New Year's Resolution

[wmperry@aventail.com (William M. Perry)]

wjhardaker@ucdavis.edu writes:

> >>>>> On 02 Jan 2000 07:11:24 +0100, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> said:
> 
> Lars> I wonder whether I'm going to accidentally lean on the `d' key
> Lars> now.  Is there any point in responding to mail that more than 4
> Lars> months old?
> 
> You know, I wonder how many software package owners have similar
> problems (and what they do about it).

After my mother became ill, I accumulated anywhere between 600 and 750 mail
messages for Emacs/W3 that were of the 'must respond to' variety, some of
which were 18 months old before I finally had the time to respond to them.
Worst I have right now is one from may of 1999.

I try _very_ hard to respond to every message, even if it is long overdue.
I tend to do this like lars in the huge batches of email-queue-induced
hysteria. :)

> Is it worth the effort to respond when some of them are that old?  They
> have certainly either solved the problem, discussion, or simply dropped
> it without my help at this point...

Some have, some haven't.  I always play it safe and try to answer
everything.  I will usually fire off a quick 'im in email overload right
now, but you are #9622 in line, you will be serviced eventually'. :)

-bp