4.3. Intros

Particularly on a social or semi-social mailing list, the welcome message will lead straight on into a bunch of introduction messages as members make themselves known to each other. These will, in turn, evolve into discussions of topics raised in the intro messages.

Sometimes you'll find the intro messages irritating, especially when a busy list goes through second-round intros to introduce all the old people to the new people, ad infinitum, but there's nothing you can do about it except try to steer the intros towards "real" topics as quickly as possible.