John Asks:
> Is it really necessary to relist every post in a thread when adding your
> own post?
While this list is full of technology professionals (and probably needn't be
asked for this kind of courtesy), the Web-Design list is not. The List-Mom,
Steve, occasionally sends out entertaining emails encouraging proper list
etiquette. Here's a couple of samples from the last year:
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If I see another reply to this list that includes the /entire post to
which it is a reply/ and then /one line of commentary/, I'll unsubscribe
the jerk who posted it. Please, people, can we at least /pretend/ that
we know how to use email in a manner both effective from a communication
standpoint and sensitive to the time pressures and other conditions
under which /other people/ will read your posts? Thanks.
Some useful resources on how not to be a waster of other people's time:
http://www.gweep.ca/~edmonds/usenet/ml-etiquette.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/mailing-list-faq/etiquette
..html
http://db.tidbits.com/article/05386
http://www.ualberta.ca/~pletendr/list-net.html
....and so on, and so on, consistently for the first few dozen or so
google search results for 'mailing list etiquette', lest you all think
I'm just being uniquely perverse in asking you to learn how to use email
effectively and not to abuse the patience of the list community here.
Steve,
it's not global warming, it's me, fruitlessly raising ocean levels since 1997
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As it appears that there are still people subscribing to this list who:
- didn't bother to read the list policies
/or/
- read them, but don't think that they need to follow them, because
o they're too important
o they're too busy
o they /really/ need the help, so anything goes
o I'm an ogre
I feel compelled to remind you that we're all in this together, that the
list policies are there to help ensure a respectful, informative, and
accessible experience for all, and they are to be ignored at your peril.
As this list community enters its tenth year, and remains stable at
around twenty two hundred members, I'm still surprised (revealing a lack
of imagination, or steadfast refusal to learn from past experience,
apparently) that there are still people who feel the need to explain to
me that what I think about this list doesn't matter, or that it's my
necessary role here to put up with their failures. Neither are true.
I'm also surprised at the sheer numbers of people who simply don't get
basic email etiquette - though with certain practices, such as top posts,
I can well see that the weight of badly designed mail clients, and time,
are against both me and tradition. But that does not excuse it, it merely
explains the forces we're up against.
So, I'll kindly reiterate a few basics, in the dim-witted dum spiro,
spero way I have, and with luck they will fall on fertile brains and
sprout there.
1) we're here to help each other and to communicate. The latter is a
necessary precondition for the former. Certain ways of communicating
have been given precedence over the years, from the early days of
email, because they are elegant, simple, accessible, and easily
learned. We use those practices here, because a cadre of early and
long-standing members of the list used them, and because they're a
good set of rules for communications. We shall continue. So should
you, if you want to benefit from your time here. Your formative
experiences with broken mail clients such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft
Mail, Outlook and various Web mail clients hold no weight against
existing Internet messaging etiquette; they merely explain your
ignorance of it where it exists.
2) we're not here out of any obligation to anyone else; the suggestion
that someone, anyone, here "must" help is an absurdity and a desperate
but ultimately unsuccessful way to get that help, and only shows a
fundamental misunderstanding of the "gift economy", to say nothing of
basic, but socialized, human nature.
3) I'm here because I feel an obligation to continue to take care of
this community, because on good days it's still useful to me, and
because on bad days I still feel that obligation as founder. Not
for a single reason more - not to help you solve your problems, not
to teach you how to use your mail client, not to explain tediously
and repetitiously the basics of email etiquette, though I may from
time to time anyway, because I do care, and that's how I believe the
world /ought/ to be.
4) I enjoy my status as otiose god here - your entreaties, your fury,
your beliefs, your tiny, clenched fists - none of this bothers me
enough to change my practices or the list policies; so wail away all
you want. If I've asked you to change your practices, and you have
not, and your mail is quarantined or discarded, and I don't know you
to have contributed to the value of the list, I don't care who you
are - you will suffer as long as you refuse to change. And I will
laugh at your pain in Alighierian delight, especially if you've
failed to heed my advice. Get over it.
Back to your regularly scheduled list traffic,
Steve
PS: the list policies are to be found in a link in the footer below:
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rambling, amusements, edifications and suchlike: http://interrupt-driven.com/
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