Letter >from my grandfather Abraham Rafalowitz 1940,
circa. Arabic characters written in Polish/Belorusyn
combination ??? I need your help with translation.
http://www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/

Because the body of the above message failed to state the VM number of the
photograph in question, I am betting that someone who would have liked to
help out may have dismissed the task as impossible. (It's pure accident
that in hitting "reply" to inform the poster of his crucial omission, I
saw the VM number only because the subject line automatically shows up at
the top of my reply screen.)

Some of us have complained before about people omitting essential facts
(usually the very surname or town they are researching!) because they think
it suffices to state it in the header alone. But it doesn't -- and here's
why: Although headers are usually shorter than messages, the maneuver of
ploughing through a header to discern the subject line often takes more
seconds than speedreading the message itself. Therefore, most readers
simply can't and won't waste valuable time on the header unless they have
first determined that the subject matter interests them. In this
particular case someone who might have been able to help the questioner
probably failed to do so because the VM number of the photograph did not
appear in the body of the message -- making lookup seem impossible!

Of about 100 jgen messages piled up at home during a recent trip, at
least five had failed to include the subject in the text of the message.
Extrapolating >from this random sample, it seems that 5% of jgen posters may
be wasting their own time as well as everyone else's, because their
messages get deleted immediately due to incomplete statement of subject
matter!

If we desire responses, we should have the courtesy to make our requests as
user-friendly as possible -- and that means stating the subject in the
message itself, not merely in the header.

Judith Romney Wegner