On Sat, 15 Jan 2005, Mario Goveia wrote:
No one is forcing him to read every post. The subject line and the name of the poster should give him a clue if he is interested or not, and he can then either delete the post, read it, respond or just move on.
Mario has been putting forth this argument for some time now. It is however problematic, and is only partly correct.
In fact, someone who takes a Marioesque position *is* indeed forcing him or her to download their message.
There's no way I can download *only* those messages which interest me, and leave out others which don't. I may delete messages which are off-topic, but still have to necessarily download the same!
Furthermore, the problem with Internet spam (and off-topic posts, or posts I didn't bargain for can get termed as spam) is that the recipient pays for them (in terms of both time, and/or dialup time ... some users still pay for the time they're online for). This is quite unlike the case with snail-mail, where the person sending junk mail has to pay the postage! This is what makes spam and off-topic posts so irritating on the Net.
This is also the reason why mailing-lists generally have a 'topic for discussion'. They lay down parameters which are accepted, in advance, to be the legit subjects for discussion of the list.
Of course, an occasional post that is off-topic would probably be accepted in the right spirit. Some lists subjects that these be marked clearly as [OFFTOPIC] in the subjectline.
It could be Goa-related, Goa+Goans related, Goans+Goa+Diaspora related, or all that plus matters directly related to Goa. (It would be disingenous to argue that the entire planet, and Mars plus the solar system is in some way related to Goa ... maybe, but one has to draw the line somewhere. Or else, we'd be like All India Radio Panjim's 7.20 'regional news' bulletin which sometimes includes news items from the entire India and possibly beyond on this specious argument.)
On the other hand, a series of off-topic posts would cause more than a small amount of irriation. Subscribers would rightly get a but-I-didn't-subscribe-for-this reaction.
Earlier, Goanet used to be fairly stringent in terms of sticking to on-topic posts -- some exceptions apart. Of late, some laxity has been shown, amidst a mixed response from Goanetters.
Keeping in mind the principle of specialisation, it does make sense to me that each mailing-list sticks to a clearly-defined area, within which its discussions revolve. I think the you're-not-forced-to-read-it argument needs to be revaluated. -FN
