[ajdecon]

> Read all incoming emails within 4 hours max and respond after reading if possible.

Oh God. I hope this is "within business hours"? Because I sleep for more than 4 hours at a stretch, thanks.

(Also: occasionally a comprehensive reply requires an essay, or the equivalent. What do you do in this case?)

[grzm]

As for the essay-length response, I want to let you know I received your comment. It deserves a longer response and I hope to get that to you by the end of day Monday. Let me know if that doesn't work for you.

[SkyMarshal]

Alternatively, "Ack".

[dingaling]

> occasionally a comprehensive reply requires an essay, or the equivalent.

Use a bulleted list or a diagram.

One of the worst e-mails I ever saw was about lifecycle of a token for PCI compliance, just a solid screen of words. My colleague who received it sat for an entire afternoon to parse it and drew a UML activity diagram from it, which he sent back to the mailing list to rapturous thanks. The original sender received only scorn, even though the was the 'authority' on the issue.