Bell’s Field Guide to Neomails

My Quick Overview of Neomails

In case you are entirely new to this whole Neomail thing, Neomail is how you communicate on Neopets. A lot like our “e-mail”, in a way. The link is located on the yellow toolbar between “world” and “shops”. When you receive a Neomail, you see a yellow envelope on the upper left-hand corner of the screen. If you want to view all of your new Neomails/events in order from most recent to oldest, simply click on the little “show all” in parentheses right underneath it, and it’ll take you to a page with all of your new events listed. Be sure that you click on it whenever it comes up, because it can get on your nerves looking at it after a while. (And you do want to be able to check your Neomail by just clicking on it, I’ve had situations where I’ve clicked on it and gotten a Neomail that I received and replied to almost a week previously once!) There are several different colors and fonts you can choose from, and using bold, italics, and underline is possible. Also, another good thing about Neomail is that you can copy and paste pictures and graphics. Be warned, there is a character/word limit. If you are trying to send a very long or graphic-heavy Neomail, you might have to divide it into several different parts in order to keep to the limit of 1400 characters. This especially goes for people collaborating on stories or comics, because the great length of the story would have to be divided into a few Neomails in order to send back and forth.

As for formatting options, there are a few basic ones, and lots of copying and pasting freedom. Mostly, the buttons are as follows (in this order from left to right):

- bold

- italics

- underline

- left alignment

- centered alignment

- right alignment

- justified alignment

- number list

- bulleted list

- Text color

- hyperlink

Then the font and size dropdowns are rather self explanatory, like the “To” line and the “Subject” line. If you still need a point of reference, just look for yourself. Most of it is all there for you.

Some things you can’t put in Neomail

Well, while Neomail is probably one of the most flexible things in the site, it still has its limits. For one thing, no outside sites are to be linked to or even mentioned to (even as just a plain URL) in Neopets. They are not kidding about this too. People have made numerous attempts to get around this rule, but as the rules get tighter and tighter, and more revision is made to checking if something is truly a URL to an outside site, it has been getting much harder to find any loopholes through. However, linking to your own e-mail address is still allowed, much hope if you want to send an outside-Neopets link to your friend or something if you both have e-mail. This helps if you want to link to a Neopets help site, your own web page, or even the URL where an image on your userlookup can be located.

Another obvious thing is that anything not abiding the Terms and Conditions of the site will be reported and destroyed. That’s a little bit obvious, but simply put, the TOC is much overlooked by many users of Neopets, and it is all too often the reason for freezings, so stick to them. ^_^ Also, no questionable language is allowed to be used anywhere in the site, so none should be used with Neomails as well.

Folders

I’m not getting much into this, but I’m going to briefly teach you how to create and name folders. Well, what you do is, go to the folders page, and you will see a text field saying “new folder” on the side. Write in the name of the folder you want to make in this text field, and press the button that says “Add”. Once it finishes loading, you will be able to view the contents of the folder.

When you first open the folder, there will be no contents. You have to move messages into that folder in order for it to have any contents. Let’s say you have a folder called “Questions”. OK, well, in order to move a message into that folder, you must go to your inbox. Once at your inbox, you click on the checkbox next to the message you would like to move to “Questions”. Scroll down until you see “Selected messages” right next to a drop down menu. Click on the drop down menu, and click on “Move to Questions”. Then press the button that says “Go!”. It should be moved to the folder now. Go to the folders section, and click on “Questions” now. It will show your message in that folder. Congrats! You just learned how to move messages into other folders. This will be helpful for organizing your messages.

Writing regular Neomails

When writing any regular Neomail, you should try to be literate (speak clearly, and distinctly), speak in good taste, and be polite. Being nice and laid back really makes a huge difference with writing Neomails to your friends. Generally speaking, be fair, have good taste, and be courteous when speaking, and you’ll be fine Neomailing anybody. Also, about speaking literately, nobody likes listening to chatspeak. Be courteous to the reader, and cut the chatspeak. I’m sorry, but chatspeak is notoriously hard to read and very annoying. The only reason why people USE chatspeak is because they’re lazy. Simple, don’t be lazy. It makes a huge difference over Neomail

Neomailing the rich and famous

When Neomailing more revered members of the site, you have to remember that they are people too. In other words, if you send them a Neomail saying, “I bend to knee at thee, my almighty ruler of Weewoo-kind,” they might think that you should be sent off to some asylum or something quickly before you go more insane than you already are (not saying that you’re insane or anything). On a similar note, you shouldn’t go saying something such as, “i‘m poor give me np,” because, honestly, they’ll just chuck it out, and go on sorting through their other messages. A few good rules for sending Neomail to the rich and famous:

- No stupid questions (examples of stupid questions are: “Where did you get your baby paintbrush?” or “Where do you find the ‘pet central’ section of the site?”)

- Speak literately, apply the basic rules of grammar, and use proper spelling. (“I thought your site was awesome!” instead of “i thot ur sit awsm”)

- No begging (examples of begging are: “u r rich giv me a pb” or “My old account was frozen, my pets are all sick, and I have no money. Give me some of your neopoints.”)

- Be precise, especially when sending criticism. Say why you think that the person’s site or article needs work… something like that. (“I think that your article needs a bit more flavor.” or “Your site needs better graphics on the layout.”) Make suggestions as well. (“Make the head on that Zafara drawing a bit less square,” or, “You should make the background of your page blue, instead of pink.”)

- Compliments of all kinds are always appreciated by any author

- If they have Neomail rules on their userlookup, FOLLOW them. Especially regarding artwork. If they say no art requests, you better bet no art requests. Also, if there are no guild requests on their userlookup, please listen. It’s rude when people don’t abide userlookup rules, so, please, always check for userlookup rules.

Also, you should understand that often you will never receive an answer from these people. Understand that they probably have read it, and do not have any time to answer it. It’s OK though, they aren’t trying to be mean! Only some of us ones who have that feeling to answer every single one of them (which annoys me after a while, as I am one of those), will be guaranteed to answer a Neomail every single time.

Answering Fanmail

Fanmail is one of those things that we receive, but usually groan about. Not that we hate compliments, but reading them by the hundreds can be a tedious task that most literally loathe. Because of this, answering fanmail is an art that we should take careful attention to. Follow these directions when setting off to do the impossible: answering fanmail:

1. Decide what to answer. Usually compliments and questions are the only ones you should answer. As for beggar mail, don’t even bother… Put the ones that you’re going to answer in a folder marked “Replied”, and put the ones that you’re not going to answer in a folder marked “Read” (or something on that note). Then go to the “Replied” folder.

2. Answer each one put in the “Replied” folder. Answers should be brief, but appreciative. A message like, “Thank you! I worked for months on it,” is enough to satisfy any fan.

You might want to make a FAQ if answering fanmail gets to be a problem. If you receive a Neomail asking something on your FAQ, simply say, “Please refer to my FAQ!” End of story. It’s easy, and efficient for those who just don’t have the time for a long-winded answer. The problem is, getting people to read it. Well, at least you’ll have it… that’s all I’m going to say.

Well, I hope you have a little more knowledge of the Neomail scene now. I’m not sure if that may have helped you at all… but it was good for a waste of time, I guess. Now you might at least know what Neomail is and how to use it. So next time you receive a Neomail, answer it! You know you want to. You’ll even be able to write to that Neopian Times author that you’ve always dreamed of talking to. ^_^ Who knows, when you’re a famous Neopian you will be able to answer other peoples’ fanmail. The possibilities are endless. Well, goodbye, and happy chatter!

Authors Note: Okay, well, I do accept Neomails, but do keep them short and readable. I’m not going to wade through a pool of chatspoken, long-winding Neomails… again! I’d much appreciate it! ^_^ Thank you…