Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
been made clear; the position of the list organizers has been made clear long ago: http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_mailing_list_netiquette
And their position trumps all others.[sic]
I'm from a place where freedom was guaranteed by a constitution.
Which is absurdly irrelevent.
It's not irrelevant -- it means it's a principle I've been inculcated with. As such, when someone tries to religiously enforce their principles on me due to their unwillingness to use good tools to read email, then it's their personal choice which is completely something they choose -- not something they can expect me to adhere to. You need to understand how people's values are formed and how this affect their future behavior and values. Being brought up with freedom from (or of) religion means you don't tolerate other people pushing their religious views on you. How is that irrelevant? This is ***OpenSuse***...Not, someone's privately list. You are talking about rules in an Open society -- which, by definition, are not something that can be established by fiat. Open also means 'inclusive' -- allowing people of different sensibilities contribute. If you limit the list to bottoms, then you get a certain type of mentality that will go into creating Suse -- which is no longer 'Open'. Complaints are widely spread about poor **user* interface design. Reason? The design lists are run by bottom posters -- as someone else put it, those who are "tech experts" and 'old-timers". They are **least** suited to know how to design easy to use interfaces. They may design interfaces that allow great power and flexibility, but easy-of-use, or attractive design? Forget it -- as a rule, such types are generally less concerned, less knowledgable and have little 'innate' sense about what would make for good user design. Case in point is on emails. They use the logic of wanting a log. Users WON'T read through alot of text to get to what they need to do -- nor will they have the patience to pour through lots of tedious configurations or options just to try something. You put the booring stuff first and you are guaranteed to lose new users or novices. That's a STRONG reason why user's should never be chastised for posting style (clipping comments down to a relevant size, I believe is still fair game, but top/bottom? That can easily be tied to and artistic sense of what looks right vs. a 'logical order' mentality. There needs to be a balance and both views need representation, or OpenSuSE won't be the best product it can be...it will steer toward 'techies', *only*...to be the best there is, you need good support for both types of users. The idea people who just want to do it or see the message or functionality up front (get to the point), and those who want to set 200 options to control every aspect of how a tool works. One SHOULD not negate the other -- but both sides are needed. Instead of a wiki talking about bottom posting -- that part should be deleted -- and people's top posting (or not) will give you an idea of what type and what level of user they are. That's useful information. Don't squander it. Same goes for HTML -- if they take the time to write something in HTML -- and it looks nice -- maybe you should listen to them for aesthetic ideas... flash graphics should stay off limits -- but pictures showing relevant design content or problems seem entirely appropriate. For those posting in HTML, they should be encouraged, privately, to also supply/send the message in plain-text as well as HTML. You go onto microsoft lists, and probably apple lists -- and HTML is far more common. It's only in the 'ugly duckling' linux, the lists are generally pushed as text-only, and even down to a 'one-format-fits all' approach. A decided difference, wouldn't you say? -linda -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org