Re: No subjects are nice

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 06:35:49PM -0500, CBFalconer wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 12:38:56PM -0800, Jake D. Stern wrote:
>>
>> > [This is a bug report, I'm following cygwin reporting instructions
>> > by posting here.  The subject line has been changed so as to not
>> > be refused. Original subject line: "xterm consumes 100% cpu when
>> > first XWin action is to close xterm."]
>> 
>> The fact that your subject was blocked didn't give you enough of a
>> clue that you were doing something wrong, eh?  The mind boggles.
>> 
>> We HAVE A MAILING LIST for Cygwin/XFree86 discussions.  Use it.
>> 
>> FYI, I've blocked this subject too.  I can keep this up all day if
>> you want.
>
><rant>
>From my standpoint this habit of blocking arbitrary subjects
>defeats the purpose of a mailing list in the first place.  It
>essentially puts one person in place as arbiter.  The user has no
>idea whether or not his subject is "on the list".

The user can easily figure out if his subject is "on the list" when they
get a bounce saying they are off-topic.  That is a signal that there is
something suspect about their message.

Apparently, the message saying "You're off-topic, if you have questions
send email to foo@bar.com" is viewed as a challenge since more than one
person has tried to circumvent the block and, instead of either doing
the research to figure out why their email could be off-topic or even
asking foo@bar.com for clarification, they, instead, decide to try
alternatives until they succeed in getting their off-topic post on the
cygwin mailing list.

The logical thought processes involved in so doing escape me.  Often it
is probably it's just a lack of familiarity with sending messages to a
public forum.

>It would be much easier if the various lists were echoed to usenet
>in the first place.

This list is available as a private newsgroup.  If you mean that it
should be in some alt or comp usenet hierarchy then we've already had
that "newsgroups am better" discussion here fairly recently.

>They could even be moderated groups.

Mailing lists can be moderated.  It takes *a lot* of effort to moderate
mailing lists or newsgroups that are filled with newbies and the
incalcitrant clueless.  I sincerely doubt that anyone would want to
moderate a forum that has as much traffic as this one.

>Adding a mailing list to someones setup requires both subscribing
>(after hearing about it in the first place) and setting up suitable
>e-mail filters.  Having done so the e-mail volume increases
>substantially, with much greater likelihood of filling an ISPs assigned
>storage.  Generally a pain.

You think that I should spend a few weeks trying to get the cygwin
mailing list into an alt usenet group because it makes your life easier?
Not interested.  You have the power.  Again, if this is a big deal for
you, then start your newsgroup and convince everyone to move over.
Personally, I have no intention of adding YA official forum for sending
cygwin observations, however.  I'm not going to force people to
subscribe to a newsgroup if they want to ask a cygwin question.

Amusingly enough, moderating a forum generates pretty much the same
result as what is happening now, even down to the "one person is the
arbiter" part.  Either you get an automated bounce or you get email from
someone telling you why your message wasn't accepted.  The majority of
the off-topic posts in the cygwin mailing list are explicitly sent to
the cygwin-xfree mailing list by an email.  Some get an automated
bounce.  Not much different from a moderated list except that it's
actually a lot more open.

Additionally, there are a number of people who aren't even aware of
usenet.  Why would we want to educate them in what usenet is and how to
set up their nntp server so that they can communicate about a problem?
That's just adding more work for the "old hands".  Or, actually, it
would focus the problem very nicely on one "old hand" -- me.  It would
increase the email to sourcemaster from people who can't figure out how
to read news.

No thanks.

>In addition I found very early that the searching provisions
>either don't function or are non-intuitive.  It is much easier to
>search newsgroups on google.  I gave up long ago on finding out
>why 'reply-to considered bad on cygwin list'.

I will concede that searching for a message with the string "reply-to"
in it is not going to be useful however I just tried it on google.com

google.com is a good way to search the sources.redhat.com mailing lists.
Look for

"reply-to" bad site:cygwin.com

and you'll find it within the first few links.

>Also consider that e-mail and newsgroups can be generally operated
>off-line.  Reading something that simply suggests a search is
>counter-productive, especially when a one or two line response
>would largely cover it.

Yeah.  Except when 27 people send in the answer.  Then we have even more
traffic.  Again, no thanks.  This is a fish teaching mailing list.

Or, are you referring to when you asked me why reply-to was considered
bad in private email?  I guess you wouldn't get 27 people responding
there but it would have required my searching for the appropriate
reference URLs.  No reason to do that when you can do it yourself.  Except
that I just basically did that for you, didn't I?  So, here's a link
to one of many reply-to discussions:

http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2002-02/msg00071.html

>c.l.c sticks pretty closely to the topic, with exceptions, and raises
>hackles.  However the hackles raised are generally of the clueless -
>here the irritation seems to be unrestricted, and only old hands appear
>to be welcome.  Again, with notable exceptions.

Don't know what c.l.c might be.  "comp.lang.c" maybe?  I'm glad that it
stays on topic, though.

I think you ought to go back through the past week of mailing list
activity and see how much traffic is generate by "old hands".  Most
of the "old hands" are answering questions raised by "newbies".  There
is not that much chatter between "old hands" other than that related
to helping people who have problems.

cgf
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