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Meta-data is data that describes other data. Meta-data is vital for us to make sense of the tidal wave of information flowing into our lives, helping us find and retrieve the information we need at the times we need it. This article will explore how meta-data can be used to create email lists with much greater value to us.

Email lists are one of the most effective and most chaotic communications tools. The chaos arises from the paucity of meta-data associated with each message. The subject line of an email message is only a bare-bones start at meta-data. Often written in haste, the subject line may or may not accurately describe the nature of the contents of the email. In the vast majority of cases there are no penalties or incentives for writing a descriptive or accurate subject line. And so the only existing meta-data for an email message is itself very weak.

For an email list to develop greater value to a community, new ways of adding meta-data to each message are required. Meta-data for any message ought to be able to be added by any member of an online community -- not just the creator of the message. And meta-data ought to be able to be added at any time after the message has been sent.

Meta-data specialists, people whose sole duty is the establishment of accurate meta-data, will arise. Naturally, many civic-minded persons will create meta-data as volunteers for lists that they care about.

How would all this work? We need to move the email generation process from email programs to the web. Each new email message would be categorized by the sender checking off boxes that add meta-data to the email. For example, if the email is a question, then that check box would be checked on. If it's an answer to a question, that meta-data would be added. The value of all this meta-data is that the archive of email lists becomes more and more like a knowledge base -- searchable by anyone within the email list community -- or outside the community.

While it may appear time consuming and labor intensive to have the originator of an email spend a minute or two filling in check boxes, the burden need not be heavy. Using a browser such a Firefox, you can have macros which fill in the meta-data for typical email messages you send to lists.

It's important that the meta-data categories themselves be expandable. Nobody can predict all the useful meta-data categories that will be useful to a list. As new categories of meta-data emerge, they ought to be easily added.

You can think of meta-data in terms of the table of contents of a book, the index of a book, or both. Meta-data is signposts. It leads you to where you want to go. Meta-data anticipates future needs for information.

While counterintuitive, meta-data can sometimes exceed the byte size of the data it is describing. This could happen if an email were short, but pregnant with meaning in a wide category of topics.

Meta-data brings the most value to people who are outside of an email list community. Without having the burden of subscribing to the email list, these persons can have ready access to the accumulated knowledge shared on the list. This blurs the boundaries between being "on the list" and "off the list," while expanding the flow of information to interested persons.

Blessed be the meta-data, for it gives us what we need. And blessed be the programmers who give us greater meta-data, because they expand access to information and knowledge.

Phil Shapiro
The author can be reached at
http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/pshapiro and at pshapiro@his.com
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Phil Shapiro pshapiro@his.com
http://www.his.com/pshapiro/ (personal)
http://teachme.blogspot.com (weblog)
http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/pshapiro (technology access work) http://mytvstation.blogspot.com/ (video and rich media)

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