While I understand the pure "netiquette" viewpoint and would tend to
believe that it would be best in an ideal world, this is not the ideal
world and I cannot agree with it. One cannot expect everyone to follow the
rules. If the mailing list is only willing to cater to people who
do-it-right, it will only end up catering to an extremely small, isolated
community of people. If you drive away the commoners so that only the
royalty remain, from whom do you collect your taxes?
Perhaps Christopher Rowan, Dimitris Vyzovitis and Paolo Ciccone said it
better than I in that bad temper and "netiquette" without "etiquette" is
worse than nothing at all. Why do people use such degrading sarcasm and bad
tempered style in their replies? What purpose does it serve? It does not
teach inquirers netiquette nor does it help to retain them as potential
users. Those who don't know the name "Dale Carnegie" really should look it up.
As for my suggestions, they are only suggestions, although I don't see any
inherent faults in them. If one is going to take the time to reply to an
inquirer, why flame them and leave them with anger and no information, when
instead you can leave them with a sense of activeness within the group as
well as the information. The former only helps them to demote the group
members in the inquirer's mind, while the latter gives them the feeling of
community. Who knows. Perhaps they can help.
As for posting an estimated time: myself, I would rather see an estimate to
the closest half year than a big technical chart that tells me nothing.
Even "No Estimate" is pretty good since it directly answers everyone's
question. For all anyone knows, those who ask may be those who've already
looked at the web page and thereafter ask "what the hell does that mean?"
People want to know when it'll be ready, not what tests it has passed. I
know it's difficult to estimate for the unknown, but that's what everyone
wants to know. If your phone line screws up, you don't want to know what
tests the telco has done and what tests remain. Likely you won't understand
it even if they tell you. You just want to know whether your line will be
operational in time for that phone interview an hour from now.
At 12:08 AM 2/24/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Gerald Gutierrez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> I'm starting to get the feeling that many in this group are approaching
>> "when will 1.2 be out" messages with a very disheartening attitude that
>> will surely turn potential users off.
>
>Well let's see. Presumably to find out about the mailing list, they
>will have visited www.blackdown.org. At that website, there is a
>*prominent* link to the JDK 1.2 status. I don't see why there is a
>big right for them to bother the list with information that they could
>have easily looked up themselves (which is also contained in the list
>archives). Common netiquette has it that you RTFM first, then check
>the archives (or dejanews or whatever), and then finally ask on the
>list if you have a question. It saves everybody's time, including the
>person looking for an answer.
>
> ...
>
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