Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2088 mails)

[Felix Miata <mrmazda@xxxxxx>]

On 2009/02/02 19:56 (GMT-0600) Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. composed:

> On Monday 02 February 2009 18:49:26 Felix Miata wrote:

> > I think you're overlooking a deeper root. 

> Yes, poorly or wrongly trained users.  :P

Of which there are many, as well as non-trained. And there always will be.
It's a problem with no hope for direct solution. Munging is a useful workaround.

> > No smaller a problem than list
> > posts not getting sent where intended or technical violation of 2833
> > (which is not law) is the recurring pollution from threads about the
> > subject.

> RFC 2833 may not be law, but standards shouldn't be taken lightly.  
> Standards (*particularly RFCs*) are what allows us to interoperate.  They 
> are the foundation of the Internet.  E.g. TCP, UDP, and IP are all RFCs.

TCP, UDP & IP RFC violations aren't created by large masses of people unaware
of the rules, quite unlike the top posters, full quoters, improper quoters,
and reply to everybody because the default list behavior is directly to
author mailing list subscribers.

The authors of 2833 have taken an ivory tower position. An option for mailing
list managers to be treated equivalent to authors would be well justfied if
typical list behavior and popular email software realities were substituted
for the ivory tower approach.

> > Of the many lists I'm on, the complaints about "bad" reply
> > behavior come almost exclusively on lists that do not munge.

> On lists that do not munge, I've never had anyone send a message to the 
> list that was meant for private mail.  Regular complainers can be killfiled 
> and missed messages can be resent, but messages to the list can't be 
> unposted.

Mistaken destination sending occurs infrequently and its "offenders" learn
quickly, both to be careful in those infrequent cases when a private reply is
appropriate, and that an important purpose of most list posting is shared
responses, both timely, and in the archives.

OTOH, messages that arrive late or never result in more genuine inconvenience
than bruised egos, and solutions received too late to help, or never
(additionally a killfile product). Oh, and newbies starting threads about
defaulting to sender don't happen on munging lists.

> > And, this
> > one is the one where they recur most vehemently and frequently.

> Well, then perhaps you aren't subscribed to the Debian mailing lists.

I sampled there some time back, but I was never a Debian fan anyway.

> > FWIW, the primary user help list for the most popular Linux distro was
> > munging when I was last subscribed there.

> Just because it is popular doesn't mean it is right.

Often popularity is a good indicator of what is right.
-- 
"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your
mouths, but only what is helpful for building
others up."                     Ephesians 4:29 NIV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/
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