magnetHEAD's Journal: How much lurk should a lurker's lurking last?

So being new to Linux and the world surrounding the myth of linux has me searching across the vast expanse of trash that is the internet. In my travels I've come across some good sources of info and help, also some of the less involving places for information. One of the best ways I've found to get info is in the form of various mail lists. Like the theory that the collection of applications under linux should not be powerhouse all-knowing kitchen-sink-too type programs but rather individual applications with little or no startup time, very low resource cost and a specific and driving motive; mail lists are usually focused on a single topic such as a single program, or process.

By being subscribed to mail lists, my hard drive quickly fills as the barrage of email arriving daily mounts, and my experience with perl is not advancing as quickly as I'd like or I would be putting all of this information to use. So instead, I read through all the email that is coming in, trying to decide in the course of a given article whether or not I can use the information inside.

This I believe is called lurking, for as a newbie I have nothing to contribute to the discussions taking place. So I'm left to wonder, what, if any is the opinion of expert users of newbie lurkers? Also, if this is lurking and I'm not contributing, how guilty should I feel for replicating the data yet again across the net to my email box?

Maybe someday all these questions will be assigned answers, maybe someday I'll come out of the dark corner of my little internet and have something meaningful to say...