You're Right -- It was HARSH -- NOT!

Ken Ray kray at sonsothunder.com
Tue Dec 13 13:17:33 EST 2005


On 12/13/05 10:19 AM, "Rob Cozens" <rcozens at pon.net> wrote:

>> I'm not saying that a thread won't or shouldn't evolve (devolve?)
>> into a philisophical or business acumen-related discussion; it's just that
>> as soon as we notice we've gotten off track, we should either take the
>> discussion offlist, or to another list, or end the thread, so that the
>> primary purpose of the use-list can remain focused on technical issues
>> related to using Revolution.
> 
> I think splitting the List is a mistake.
> 
> No one is forced to read every post on every subject.  I have Eudora
> deliver all my use-rev mail to the trash.  I read the threads and/or
> responders whose opinions I have found worth reading, transfer any
> messages I want to keep to another mailbox, and when I quit Eudora
> the rest is gone.  I doubt I read half of the posts I received this morning.

The only problem I have with this is that when a post starts with a
technical question with a subject like "Getting htmlText to work", and then
eventually ends up in a philosophical discussion, there's no (easy) way for
filters to filter out the muck... you have to look at every post, and that's
a waste of time.

> Imagine, if you will, that we are a team of programmers working
> together on a long-term project.  What kind of synergy develops if
> every time someone brings something personal or not directly
> project-related into the conversation, another person responds, "I'm
> not interested in listening to the rest of you discuss this, so [as
> Judy so elegently put it] piss off."
> 
> People who come to the List only wanting free help with Revolution
> programming ought to accept desire of those who provide it to discuss
> other issues among themselves on the same list.

That's like saying that people who go to the movies to see a movie ought to
put up with people talking to each other about other topics than the movie.
Or that a person needing help from a contract friend in putting together an
entertainment center ought to put up with other people coming in and talking
to that friend about other topics.

In both cases, it winds up being an interruption, IMHO, even if it's an
entertaining one. 

It's not the interruptions that's the issue, IMHO, since that is part and
parcel of a mailing list. It's the fact that it's difficult to filter out
the interruptions.

So perhaps there's a happy medium... as an alternative to moving the
conversation off-list, perhaps just changing the subject line to "[OT]" and
rephrasing the discussion topic might help in the filters doing their work.
That way everyone can have their cake and eat it too. (That is, unless you
get a digest of the mailing list, in which case you're stuck reading every
post anyway...)

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com




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