First, a confession.  99% of the time, I delete the FML out of my mailbox
without reading a word.  Why?  Because for my purposes it is information
overload--the Table of Contents helps, but there are just too many posts for
it to be feasible for me to sort through it and find the ones I want.
 
I am not complaining about this.  About a year ago I posted some suggestions
on how the list might be kept to a managable size, and got a variety of
responses.  Several people replied via e-mail saying that they agreed with
me, and a couple said they were about to drop the FML for that reason, but
plenty of other replied saying that they like the list at its present
prodigious size.  Fair enough.
 
However, there are certain types of information that it is especially
important for everyone on the list to get, information about immediate
dangers to our ferrets--I have epidemics in mind, but other people can
probably think of other major threats.  Perhaps these things are pretty
rare, although I remember getting a notice about a distemper epidemic from
LOS a few years ago.  How would it be if in the rare case where this is a
bulletin like this to be distributed it gets sent out specially, with
something in the message header like NEWS FLASH so that everyone will
recognize it as something not to be missed.  I know that it would be a pin
for the moderator if these special mailings had to go out all the time, but
presumably it is pretty rare.
 
[Posted in FML issue 1456]