I request those of my friends who are overly fond of forwarding jokes to forward them to the doplight address. All mailing lists reach the doplight address and do not impinge on my more regular email. This is particularly useful especially since, about once a month, I get an urge to try a new mailing list. No sooner do I subscribe than my mailbox gets loaded with 200 messages that consist of two idiots flaming each other. I can simply delete them all and unsubscribe from the list without losing valuable email.
All correspondence related to my job and emails from friends which require responses come to my regular email address. Something that I gave much thought to was which email address to provide on my website. Initially (about three years ago), it was a no-brainer. Whatever emails were sent from the website were genuine messages -- queries, kudos, criticism. Nowadays, things are not so clearcut. Trolling robots mine the web for things that look like email addresses and add them to junk mail databases. Then, just when I'm concentrating on a tricky problem, comes a beep telling me a new way to make money fast.
Wouldn't it be better to simply change the email address on my webpages to the one that I may sometimes not read? At present, the equation is still in favor of retaining my "real" email address on this website. Do not be surprised, if sometime from now, you see that the email address below has a "doplight" in it. Of course, since you have lingered long enough to read this page, you are no robot. You are welcome to remove the "doplight" from the email address when you email me.
