A good columnist makes you think, so I applaud Wayne Spivak for last week's column 'Defending spam, plus survival tips for a spam-filled world' (page 40), which got me thinking about how messaging is used.

I'm not talking about SENDING MESSAGES IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS or using those damned emoticons or phrases such as (GRIN!) after an obviously stupid sentence. (This is the electronic equivalent of the guy who whacks you on the arm and says, 'Hey, just kidding!' after an insulting remark.) Miss Manners has already addressed cyber-etiquette in a new book.

What intrigues me is where the boundaries of propriety lie in the business use of messaging. What's the appropriate use of E-mail to solicit business, conduct research, or create awareness of your company and products?

I can't share Spivak 's enthusiasm for nearly unbridled use of E-mail, as anyone who's read my earlier column can attest (see 'Learning to hate E-mail,' July 8, 1996, page 30). But I also don't side with the people who violently overreact to any unsolicited missive.

So what's kosher? Consider some messaging issues we've encountered lately: Last week, we received a message from a gentleman who objected to 'unsolicited commercial E-mail' from one of our reporters. The reporter had plucked the addresses of 15 users from a newsgroup and sent the people questions regarding a story she was preparing. She didn't want to post the questions for fear of tipping off competitors. Was her approach inappropriate?

Each week, we send tens of thousands of copies of InFusion, an electronic newsletter highlighting stories and resources on Network World Fusion (www.nwfusion.com). We think you want to know what's new, but it doesn't take the proverbial rocket scientist to figure out that a secondary goal is to increase traffic on the site and make advertisers happier. The number of people who complain about InFusion is quite low. (Although one very angry recipient, who had difficulty unsubscribing, wanted to charge us $1 for each piece of mail received.) As more companies market their Web sites, you'll be getting more of these electronic missives. Should you?

A couple months back, we set up a moderated E-mail discussion forum, called the Intranet Business Group, to foster discussion among people building intranets. To get the group rolling, we pulled addresses from a number of internal sources using criteria that indicated involvement with intranets. So far, we've heard few complaints from the folks we signed up, but were we presumptuous?

Where do you draw the lines? I'm soliciting your response.