Reducing Noise [was Re: Animated Gifs - MouseOver conflicts}

On Apr 19, 14:56, Murray Altheim wrote:
> It's not the responsibility of a specific group to notify people where to
> look for topics outside of the scope of that group. It is the
> responsibility of those sending the message into a public forum that they
> follow by the topic of that forum. If you want to talk about www in
> general, www-talk is the most logical listserver, and there are several
> newsgroups for discussion of web-related topics, all beginning with
> 
>     comp.infosystems.www.*
> 
> There's enough noise on topic listservers without off-topic subjects. It
> also confuses those who don't bother to read listserver charters as to what
> *are* appropriate topics, which further confounds the noise. This isn't a
> coffee shop where we gather to have a friendly conversation. It is for
> technical discussion of HTML -- I agree with Paul.

I agree with Paul, too, and only added that it would be nice to
point someone in the right direction while chastising them for
an inappropriate posting.  It doesn't have to be our responsibility
before we help someone.

If you are interested in reducing the noise in any mailing list, a
canned response with a collection of helpful pointers will go a long
way.  Posting it to the list weekly is even better.

On Apr 19, 15:19, Paul Prescod wrote:
> If you want to be friendly and helpful, be friendly and helpful. If you want
> to be nasty, be nasty. As long as you do either in _private_ email, nobody
> else will know or care. I only sent public email this time because I spent a
> while looking up that quote and thought that if everyone kept it close at
> hand we can make this mailing list more useful.

Yes, I agree.  Being friendly and helpful is more likely to
help the mailing list, too.

On Apr 19, 18:46, Harold A. Driscoll wrote:
> Collaboration is a good thing. How about proposing an ehnanced version of
> his quote, which we can then send to folks?  Just a constructive suggestion.

Excellent suggestion!

Sometime during the last year we had the same discussion on the
inet-access list.  We used to get dozens of "how do I become an
ISP" and "what is a router" questions a week, which often started
a further discussion about what was appropriate for the list.  We
now have a weekly "Welcome to inet-access" posting which states
the purpose, gives examples of appropriate and inappropriate
subjects and goes on to list a number of more appropriate mailing
lists, web sites, etc, for related subjects.  Since then the noise
level is almost down to zero.

I'm more than willing to put together such a thing here and post
it once per week.  It can also be quickly forwarded via email to
the occasional criminal.  If any of you think this is a good idea
send me a quick email.  And if you can suggest things that should
be in the posting - please do!  I'll need help with it.

Cheers,
Ray

Received on Sunday, 21 April 1996 13:31:47 UTC