On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 02:40:46PM -0800, Corey Head wrote: > I have to agree...but either way, top or bottom, if > this is the 'etiquette' of the list, perhaps that > could be explained to someone when they subscribe--not > just getting snubbed when you top-post unknowingly. > This is a rule I'm unfamiliar with--being new to the > mail-list game. Don't just snub people about it (yes > I'm talking to you Alexander Dalloz--see "Possible > Apache or Squirrelmail Bug?" thread)--let someone know > and then perhaps they won't do it anymore. And > yes--you can do it in a nice way Mr. Dalloz! Corey - Alex was not nasty, just concise and accurate. Please read: "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" By Rick Moen and Eric Raymond. here :http://www.catb.org/%7eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html Quote: ################################################################### On Not Reacting Like A Loser Odds are you'll screw up a few times on hacker community forums ? in ways detailed in this article, or similar. And you'll be told exactly how you screwed up, possibly with colourful asides. In public. When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the experience, claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies, scream, hold your breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's employers, leave the toilet seat up, etc. Instead, here's what you do: Get over it. It's normal. In fact, it's healthy and appropriate. Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by people actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that all criticism should have been conveyed via private mail: That's not how it works. Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally insulted when someone comments that one of your claims was wrong, or that his views differ. Those are loser attitudes. There have been hacker forums where, out of some misguided sense of hyper-courtesy, participants are banned from posting any fault-finding with another's posts, and told ?Don't say anything if you're unwilling to help the user.? The resulting departure of clueful participants to elsewhere causes them to descend into meaningless babble and become useless as technical forums. ###################################################################### Despite the presence of those who wish to turn this list into one of meaningless babble, it will not be permitted to happen by those who inhabit it. -- Jargon file, abrgd.: The September that never ended. On the Internet, every September's freshmen influx got their first accounts and, not knowing how to post/email, always made a nuisance of themselves. Usually they were trained in a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post, overwhelming the capacity to acculturate them; to those who recall the period before, this triggered a decline in the quality of online communications. Syn. eternal September. http://kinz.org http://www.fedoranews.org Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.
