Once you're on the invitation list, unless you request otherwise, you will receive invitations to my large cocktail parties, my smaller cocktail parties, other parties I host (such as my Super Bowl, July 4 and New Years Eve parties), and parties and events hosted by other organizations.

These invitations fall into two categories. The first are invitations where I request a response, even if you are not attending. These include the large cocktail parties, the smaller cocktail parties, and a few of the other parties and events hosted by other organizations. For these events, I will send more than one invitation if you do not respond.

The second are invitations where I am not seeking a response if you're not attending. For these, you'll receive just one invitation and no follow-up invitations. You may receive a reminder.

You can tell whether a response is requested by looking at the title of the invitation (in the first e-mail received through Evite), or by the subject line and the title of the invitation (for second and subsequent e-mails receive through Evite for a particular event). If it begins with "RSVP --", then I am requesting that you RSVP even if you cannot attend. If it does not, then I am not making such a request.

The only events where a RSVP is mandatory are my large cocktail parties. Through an invitation cycle (which begins which the first invitation through the date of the party), I will continue to send invitation unless you respond. If you don't respond, you'll receive another invitation. Through an invitation cycle, you might receive up to 10 invitations. If you don't want this to happen, the solution is very simple — RSVP through the Evite system (or alternatively, asked to be removed from the invitation list). If you don't know whether you can come, simply RSVP "Maybe."

For the large cocktail parties, if you don't RSVP through two or more invitation cycles, I will probably remove you from the invitation list for all of the parties, not just the large cocktail parties. I do this because as noted in my history of my parties, I'm looking to create a social oasis free of rude and flaky people and space cadets. Not responding through two invitation cycles means someone has ignored 20 or more invitations in a row. If one is going to do that, the odds that they won't respond to an e-mail or phone call from someone they met at one of my parties is high, and that's not the kind of person I'm looking for at these parties.

As far as I know, we're the only social group in Boston that has this policy. People repeatedly ask me how I've managed to assemble so many polite and friendly people. They assume I must be a great judge of character, or perhaps I use some sophisticated personality profiling to identify the good people. I'm a lousy judge of character and as much as I love personality profiles, I don't use them in determining who is invited to these parties. Over time, my very simple but effective policy of weeding out those who fail to respond increases the quality of those attending. Two invitation cycles are a total of two months. If someone is rude, flaky or a space cadet, in two months I can get remove them from my list, without having to know anything else about them. It's a highly efficient system — very little cost to collect information for a characteristic that is normally hard to determine. And the number of Type I (false positive) errors is low — what are the odds that some who is as polite as I am looking for is going to ignore 20 invitations in a row?

For the smaller cocktail parties, in the invitation and the subject line for subsequent invitations, you'll be asked to RSVP even if you're not attending. I typically send one invitation and two follow-up invitations, until I have the number of people I am looking for at that party. If you don't RSVP, it is no big deal. Unlike the large cocktail parties, I do not track who does not respond, and I do not remove someone from the list even if they don't respond to the invitations for the smaller cocktail parties.

For a few of parties and events hosted by other organizations, I will ask that you RSVP even if you're not attending. These are events where I am trying to maximize attendance, in many cases because I am on the committee. (The simple fact is that the more follow-ups that are sent, the higher the percentage of people who will attend the event, since for many people, it takes several invitations for an event to register in their mind.) How much I care about the number of people attending determines how many follow-up invitations are sent. Every year I am on the committee for the United Nations Association of Greater Boston gala. It's an expensive event and I want to fill up several tables. So I keep sending invitations until people respond — as many as 15 invitations, since I provide much more notice for that than I do my large cocktail parties. So if you see "RSVP --" at the beginning, you should RSVP, even if you're just a maybe.

Despite my hard-earned and well-deserved reputation as a hardass (of which I am very proud), as with the smaller cocktail parties, after a party hosted by another organization is over, I do not track who did not respond. If you don't RSVP to one of the events hosted by another organization, I will not remove you from the invitation list. The only time I remove someone from the invitation list for not responding is if they don't respond to invitations for the large cocktail parties.

One final note — there is another reason why I insist that people RSVP for the large cocktail party. I started using Evite in June, 2005. Before that, people RSVPed by sending me an e-mail, which meant I was receiving in excess of 15,000 responses a month. I simply didn't have the bandwidth to handle that many e-mails. By switching to Evite, I have gained back some semblance of control in my life. Thus, it is really important to me that I be able to use Evite for my parties.

In most cases, Evite limits the number of people you can add to your invitation list to 500 people. Given I have several times that number of people on my invitation list, I needed an exception from Evite. Evite reviewed my information and talked with people they knew in Boston, who apparently knew me. Apparently they heard good things. Nevertheless, Evite was skeptical when they learned I would be sending over 30,000 Evite invitations a month through their system.

Evite is concerned about spammers using their system, which is why they limit most people to inviting no more than 500 people. After all, how many have more than 500 people they know to invite to a party? If spammers use Evite to spam people, then Evite's e-mail address and IP address will be blocked by many anti-spam programs, which could eventually put Evite out of business. So Evite wants to be especially diligent about not permitting spammers to use Evite as a base for sending spam.

In order to keep one's special status at Evite (i.e., to be able to invite more than 500 people to any particular event), one normally needs to have a response rate of at least 75 percent — i.e., at least 75 percent of the people you invite need to RSVP Yes, No or Maybe. That is a high percentage, particularly since most people on the invitation list have opted to receive all e-mails, and thus they will receive a lot of invitations.

On my list, only for the large cocktail parties can I come close to a 75 percent response rate, and that is only because I keep sending invitations to people until they RSVP. If I invite everyone on my invitation list to an event hosted by someone else (and thus I don't keep bugging them until they respond), as many as 80 percent of those on my invitation list will not respond. Ordinarily this would be a huge problem for Evite. We agreed they would monitor only the large cocktail parties. For those, however, we agreed that at least 80 percent of those invited will respond.

Keeping my relationship with Evite is obviously very important to me, as I cannot go back to personally receiving 15,000 e-mails a month. Evite's request strikes me as reasonable, given their need to deny spammers access to their system. For this reason, I am quite adamant about guests responding and removing those who do not respond.