-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At some point hitherto, Benjamin Scott hath spake thusly: > > More effort has now been spent on this thread than will ever be spent > summarizing anything.
Sometimes, when one is a member of a loose community such as this one, it is worth spending a little "non-productive" time on establishing what minimal protocol, if any, the group should be expected to follow. With e-mail lists in general, such protocol often includes things like how much off-topic posting is considered tolerable; whether message attachments are allowable, and if so how large they can be; how much quoting is considered appropriate or inappropriate; whether to munge headers or not; how much information to provide when providing links; etc. Civilization is all about coming to a concensus on what is acceptable behavior, and what isn't. Any society, organization, or group has protocol. Some are well published and well understood; others are less so. Ben's point about people all being different and having different opinions is a good one, and is the very reason we have things like laws, rules, and protocols. Having published protocols is a good way to prevent new members of the community from behaving in such a way as to offend veteran members, as well as to help them understand what behaviors they might not prefer which the group considers acceptable (and therefore to be tolerated). This is what good communication is all about, and from my perspective, good communication is the reason mailing lists like this one exist. The intent of my message was not to start a flame war, but to *propose* that we, as a group, decide that part of our group protocol be to include some non-zero amount of information about links that we provide -- at least providing enough to allow the reader, who may or may not be interested in the subject matter, to make a decision as to whether the information provided is of interest. I was also not accusing Ben of not doing this. Despite his disclaimer, he did provide some minimal amount of information about his link (though personally I would have preferred just a little more). However, many people do provide links without *any* useful information. The disclaimer Ben provided (in saying he'd prefer not to misquote or misinterpret the subject material) suggested that in some cases this is preferable, which I personally feel is never the case. As the reader, in my opinion, it is always preferable that a poster provide at least *some* information about the post. It was my intent to determine whether the group, as a whole, could come to a concensus one way or another as to whether or not it should be considered desireable to provide a minimum of information about links that are posted. Instead, it seems that we, as a group, are nearly incapable of having such questions asked without someone getting offended, or providing an offensive answer. I do not believe that the questions posed in my original post on this topic warranted offense. Nevertheless, I apologize if I offended anyone. - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - --------------------------------------------- I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE84XLxdjdlQoHP510RAqFNAKCyq/qhJvKDv8ECb/uZOjglBkzTUwCgsYUU apwrQABBo4PejhmDdDdrSEY= =XMoi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
