In any one day, you may receive in excess of 20 e-mails from the list serve if you are participating on an active list serve. Regardless of the topic area of the message, you will receive all messages written to the list serve. It is not necessary to respond to all or any of the list serve e-mails you receive. List serves offer a digest version which combines all messages and delivers them to your e-mail address once a day. There are posted, agreed upon netiquette rules.
Individuals register for the bulletin boards and list serves before they begin to participate.