Write to MSDN Magazine! But include a subject line.

MSDN Magazine welcomes your email, either to our editorial staff or to one of our many fine columnists. However, there is one thing you should be aware of. Due to the popularity of our site within the community of spambots, we receive well over 1000 spams a day to our column aliases!

When you receive that much crud, it can actually be easier to deal with in some ways, because you'll get numerous emails with the same subject line. At the end of each day, we do a bulk delete on the spam, then forward actual reader comments to the appropriate recipients. This saves our columnists the time of sorting through crud, and also makes them more likely to see your important questions.

However, this also means that if you've sent us legit mail with certain non-descript subjects, it's more likely that your mail gets spam-swept. For instance, don't send email with the subject line "help"; send it with a subject line like "Dino - please help me with datagrids." Other common subject lines you should avoid include:

  • Approved
  • Charissa, Do You Think You Have Seen It All?
  • CitiBank Alert Message 12/02/2007
  • Hello
  • Hi
  • help
  • Important
  • My details
  • OTC Stocks:Heat Investor Alarm
  • Request
  • Steven, here's the Martial_Arts link I promised
  • Thank you!
  • 阿里巴巴贸易通群发
  • ПРОИЗВОДСТВО НАРУЖНОЙ РЕКЛАМЫ

We don't even know what theose last two say, but we get a lot of them.