As a number of you have noted, there has been a recent rash of
flagrantly off-topic posts. Sadly, there has also been a marked
increase in UNSUBSCRIBEs -- people who have left the list due to
the flood of non-Mersenne Prime related traffic.
A reminder for my fellow North Americans: There are many countries
where people must pay for connect time, not only to their ISP but to
the phone company. In other words: NO FREE LOCAL CALLS. Furthermore,
some phone systems barely handle 9600 baud, much less 33.6 or higher.
People are paying real money for your off-topic posts. They are
also paying for untrimmed replies (excessive quoting). And (I am not
making this up) some people actually refuse to trim their replies
"because it is too much effort".
A reply to an "off-topic post" is an "off-topic reply".
A reply to an "on-topic post" can be private.
If the traffic volume is getting too annoying, consider subscribing
to the Mersenne Digest, instead. See:
http://www.scruznet.com/~luke/signup.htm
We could turn this into a moderated list -- all posts having
to be approved by a net.cop. I'd like to avoid that. Let's hold
off such discussion and wait and see if this off-topic flurry stops.
Such activity seems be cyclic -- we've seen it before.
Most off-topic posts are coming from a relatively few people, mostly
Mersenne-newbies. I suggest that you list-subscribers (including
lurkers) send private email to the offending posters encouraging them
to be more responsible.
--Luke
