+1 to the nth however much that is... Of course there is much value in the community aspect of the list but when the majority of traffic is noise, good people who make high quality technical contributions go by the wayside. I said just that here 10 years ago and it is still my experience. Previous conversations such as this spawned groups like Mad Techies, Admin-Misc, Late Afternoon where OT banter was the charter. Certainly there's a place for it but it's not this list's charter unless Stu has been misleading us all these years :-)
IT is my profession first and foremost, that was why I joined this list so many years ago and it has been an invaluable resource. With the current state of economic affairs, more-with-less realities make time increasingly more precious. I find the technical contributions to be of the most value and I don't like seeing them diluted to the point where it takes too much time to wade through the chaff to find the gems. I just see history repeating itself when people like some of the MVPs who have joined us talk about abandoning it. There is the inevitable ebb and flow of the noise/sig ratio but I have always found it disturbing when some of the very valuable contributors fade away because of it. One thing I think we all agree on, thanks to everyone who takes time out their busy day to help their fellows by sharing their knowledge and experiences. It is as they say in the ads, priceless. --bob -----Original Message----- From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 6:04 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Good NT sysadmin list? Personally I don't really want to wade through 100 messages deleting 75 of them. When you get 5-600 messages a day, pressing delete for 75% of them isn't scalable. I'm with Ben - can we either have less noise, or can someone recommend a better list? Cheers Ken -----Original Message----- From: Ray [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, 28 August 2009 6:14 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Good NT sysadmin list? I'd be worried more if that 25% actually took up 25% of my time. But the delete key's a beautiful thing. -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 3:09 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Good NT sysadmin list? Anyone here know of a good email list to discuss NT sysadmin issues? Seriously, folks, the signal-to-noise ratio on this list is going to hell. Today we had 15 messages on the definition of a word (here's a tip: www.google.com), 37 on a cartoon, 8 on banjos, 5 on the security of Mac's, 7 that were basically bitching about lack of recognition in one's job, 4 asking if the list was up (email asking if email was working?!?), and 1 get-well wish in a 3-day-old banned thread. That's 77. Oh, and about 20 that were actually something like on-topic. That's a ratio of about 4:1, or 25%. Twenty five percent. Ponder that a bit. Would you work for 25% of your pay? Would you pass a student with a 25% grade average? I think it's one thing to have the occasional off-topic message or thread, or occasional joke. This is something else entirely. This is the occasional on-topic message in a sea of crap. I've seen Stu kill more threads in the past 7 days than I've seen him do in the previous year. Is it too much to ask that people act like adults and exercise a little self-discipline? Whatever happened to "on-topic and low noise"? I realize I've been a sometime contributor to some of this myself, and from this point forward I'm going to strive not to be. I ask that you please all join me in that. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
