Email Answering Policy

I am usually happy to engage in intelligent, productive or just downright fun conversations via email, even with people I haven't talked before. Unfortunately, way too many people or conversations just don't fit these criteria. So I want to make public my official email answering policy, in case you think I'm taking way too long to answer.

Nice ways NOT to get an answer from me

• Send me spam. My bayesian filters deal with this wonderfully so I'll problably never see it. And in the rare events that I do, I dutifully retrain my filters.
• Send anything unsolicited that might be potentially annoying: jokes, your-philosophic-message-of-the-day, movies, or otherwise large files. It's not that I don't appreciate some of these things; it's the duplicates that I can't stand.
• You sent me HTML email. Resend it in text/plain.
• Ask a dumb question that you could have easily figured out by yourself. Take a hint:

These rules are often relaxed for my closest friends. You know who you are.

If you think I'm taking too long to reply

• I must be in my over-overworked state (overworked is normal) and can't reply immediately. Every two or three days I reread my inbox to catch these cases. Try again if I don't reply within this time.
• You reply may be requiring careful reflection or research. Wait.
• I accidentaly deleted your message or simply forgot. These cases are rare, but sometimes do happen. I apologize for those.