On 8/12/05, Renegade Penguin <renegadepenguin@comcast.net> wrote:
I agree with Ken. If Novell were using 21st century technology this would be forum software like Social MPN instead of a mailing list. This caters to the lowest common denominator, and allows access to everyone.
If you want to cater and reach the masses, then catering for the lowest common denominator is good.
Not all change is for the good, but that doesn't mean that top-posting is bad. Some people can recall threads and don't need to scroll to the bottom to read - those people top-post.
You have to take into account that this is a mailing list. That means that the mail messages will be read 6 months from now as it is also a technical resource. Top posting makes sense if you have a one-on-one discussion with someone or if everybody is following the thread in real time. But if you read the thread a few months from now, then top posting is very frustrating.
Who is on METERED dial-up? I know about metered broadband, but metered DIALUP? I haven't seen that since about 1996 in the US - so nearly 10 years now. Are there still places that charge by the hour? Honestly asking.
It is not only US people that are subscribed to this mailing lsit. Do yourself a favour and come and live in South Africa for a few months, earning the average wage. We are supposed to be a technically advanced nation, but our (only, monopolistic) telco started punting ISDN about 5 years ago as the latest in internet technology. About 2 years ago they started with ADSL - a whole 512k downstram and 128k upstream at a hefty price. And they limit you to 3GB per month. If you want better than that you need to dish out a lot of money. Most people here still use metered internet over analogue modem. The telco charge you by the minute. Now think about the whole of Africa - that is even worse. Mailing list nettiquette is just good manners. Even if the whole world has lots of cheap bandwidth, bad netiquette still causes unneccessary load on all the systems that it passes through. It is not efficient use of resources. Then we ask why our natural resources are dwindeling and we wonder about things like the ozone problem and greenhouse effect and what not. (I am by far not Green Peace or anything like that ) We don't take the time to think how our actions affect our environment and the environment includes other computers, servers, routers, everything that is affected by each mail you send. You think that your 2kb extra in the mail is nothing, but multiply that my the thousands of people that it get sent to and the paths around the world that it takes. Then multiply that with the number of messages sent on the millions of mailing lists. Just think logically about it. -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~