2 questions on emailing mods/admins

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1

  1. How annoying is it if a Doper emails moderators or administrators of the SDMB?

  2. I would like to ask a question to moderators of certain forums on this board. Would they mind if I sent one email to them?

WRS

2

It’s not annoying at all. Sometimes I don’t answer right away, or at all, but generally I don’t mind getting email from posters. I even like to get email from some people.

Having said that…make sure you put SDMB in the subject title. I just found out that I’d missed an email from someone who used a hushmail address and had no subject listed. Since that sort of thing tends to be spam, and landed in my junk mail file, I deleted it without reading it. I check my junk file a couple of times a day, and sometimes a legitimate email is in there, particularly if the writer used a lot of HTML in the letter. It’s also good to copy several mods/admins on your letter, in case one of us is offline for one reason or another.

3

Thank you very much, Lynn Bodoni! I appreciate your input.

WRS

4

Yep, I’ll echo Lynn’s comments, I think she speaks for all of us.

I just add that, if you’re going to email me about hot stock tips, not even putting SDMB in the title will get me to read it.

5

Chiming in with the others… I’d very much welcome emails from our members.

Just remember to put SDMB in the subject line, and your SDMB username somewhere in the email. Also remember that admins are usually a lot busier than mods, and may not reply immediately.

6

Well, while we’re here, I’ve been wondering if the staff minds being IMed. I’ve actually never checked to see who’s posted an AIM (or other) screen name publicly, but there’s at least one staffer’s screen name that’s pretty obvious, based on the e-mail address. I added it a long time ago, but I kinda figured that with all the e-mails and on-board work to be done, the last thing you guys need is some yahoo IMing you live while you’re trying to do other stuff.

So, IMing the mods/admins, yay or nay?

7

I think that will vary by Mod.

Speaking personally, I guess it depends on what I’m doing at the time. And, of course, whether I recognize your IM=screen name. So, I guess I’m OK with IMs as long as you understand that you might get “I’m busy now, I don’t have time for IMs” and don’t feel hurt or insulted.

I also tend to ignore IMs from screen names that I don’t recognize, so you might start with something clearly identifying (“Hi, this is TubaDiva from the Straight Dope Message Boards”)