Hi, On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 8:30 PM, Natarajan V <[email protected]> wrote: > good idea. The best option would be to leave that "policing" (for > want of a better word), to the person who is genuinely trying to > answer the question.
Agreed that it is the best option. But if someone's post goes unanswered/unreplied for some reasonable amount of time, we should let them know what they are doing wrong and how. Also we should suggest them ways to do it correct the next time. > SPAM. When I search for similar queries before asking, I see this > thread X, with 1 reply (in a threaded view). I get excited and open > it, and only to find that it is a "follow the rules" mail. which is > really frustrating, amounting to trolling/spamming. The truth is top posting and other things for which there are too many reminders these days in this list are almost as annoying for a lot of people, most of who just tolerate it. Most of the people who don't follow the guidelines this, imho, are people who just follow their threads, a few don't even follow theirs from what I understood from a mail in this discussion. The best way to let those people know is to tell them in the thread. But sadly, some people "follow" the discussion, reply to it, make the same mistakes. :-(. The repeated reminders (aka spam according to some of those on this list) is to just give them a chance to learn, but judging by the volume of reminders nowadays, I guess the people are filtering out emails or refusing to learn. I remind people about the guidelines because I see it as a chance to allow them to learn things not because I want to police people on the mailing list guidelines and help save some time, bandwidth and frustration. I try to be very minimal (because being detailed isn't going to help imho) and polite while requesting (with 'Please') people to read the mailing list guidelines since I believe it is nowhere close to 'public bashing' as mentioned somewhere in this discussion. :-) > Now, there is a "D" who is a repeat offender. Kicking him/her out of > the list is a "good idea". I don't think it may help as much as really educating the ignorant, imho :-) > No personal offences meant. Request you to kindly take it in a healthy sense. There is a lot of constructive feedback for both the parties to take from your email. :-) My strategy from now on would be to wait for some time till some one with an answer to point out the mistakes if any. If there is no feedback on the mistake for some reasonable amount of time, I will try to send an off-list mail to the person, clearly and politely explaining in full detail, helping him/her to learn. But if even that goes into deaf ears, I will reply directly to the offender asking him to read the mailing list guidelines and follow them. This should definitely reduce the volume of reminders from my side, which I admit has been huge in the recent past. Thanks & Regards, Guruprasad _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
