OOC - The Importance of Email

Who uses email alongside the site? Who checks their email on a regular basis? Who thinks email is essential to OW communication and effective moderating?

The thing is I know a good number of us do not check emails or see them as part of this thing we do on Ongoing Worlds. I am not judging :) So I guess what I am wondering is as a moderator how worried should I be about making sure that my players are of the emailing kind?

When you join Maelstrom you get an email welcoming you on board and if needed asking for tweaks to your character to help them fit the setting. Players who do not respond to this message do not get in, no matter how good their character. I feel mean when I say this but at the end of the day if I relent then I potentially then have people in the game who have not bought into the style and spirit of the world we are writing in and will get quickly disheartened. Every time I have ignored my rule it has gone wrong in some way.

I also dislike excessive use of OOC for a number of reasons. Firtly is breaks the flow of the game and just messes with my OCD. Secondly, it invites the wrong kind of drama into the game environment. In-game negativity is a game killer while a game can survive quite a bit of negativity via email and away from the main game environment. And finally when it comes to dealing with issues people are much nicer on email that in forum because they are not playing to a wider audience.

So what do we think? Just how important is email?