On Wed, 14 Jun 2000, K Mitchell wrote:

At 01:29 PM 6/14/00 -0700, Aaron Nabil wrote:

...

<rant>

These off-topic posts really bug me, there are a dozen better mailing lists and newsgroups. What bugs me even more is people answering off topic posts BACK TO THE LIST.

</rant>

Sometimes off-topic posting does get out of hand, but small transgressions such as Jeff's certainly aren't as earth-shattering as you're making it out to be. Especially considering the amount of help Jeff's given this list. Why should he be forced to join yet another list just to ask a question that many people here can answer and won't significantly disrupt the list?

Any single piece of spam can be rationalized the same way. The problem is that it's never just one. Then it's not just his post, it's the additional off-topic followups. I'm not picking on Jeff, but do you think if I browsed the archives that was the _only_ off topic post he made? I can guarantee you it isn't because the line /dev/nulling him is still in my procmailrc, just commented out. It all adds up. It adds up to a lot. Off-topic posts have to get stored and archived as well, the s/n degredation is permanent. On this list, I need to read every piece of email on that has an ambiguous Subject: like "stupid question" just in case it's important, or actually is an on-topic question that I can answer. People who post off topic not only impact the other list users directly, they also make it less likely people like me reading the list to _answer_ questions will continue to do so. If you don't believe me, look at inet-access, it's impossible to keep up with because of all the garbage and weenie questions. That's the direction this list is heading if it's going to be the "defacto ISP information group".

Personally, I consider most of the lists I'm on to be a community of professionals who share equipment, software, or other interests, not hard-assed "this topic only" question and answer forums. Some are stricter than others, but most allow for some small amount of digression from the stated topic, and that's fine.

Most of the list you are on may be exactly that kind of list, and that's fine, I subscribe to those also. Do you think usr-tc is that kind of list, ie, the USR-tc social club, or a technical list? Thanks,

. . .

Aaron Nabil - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.