On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 12:21 -0800, Hill, Greg wrote: > It's odd. I've been on the list for 2 years or so. This week is the > first time I recall anyone caring about this, and I've seen plenty of > cross-posted emails from a lot of different people. Why is this a big > deal? It's pretty common in message boards where there's a crossover > audience. Most mailing list etiquette makes little sense to me, but > this has to be the one that makes the least sense.
It depends on the reason for the cross posting. First, reasons cross posting is annoying: 1) It fractures conversations. The exact symptoms depends on the MUA of each participant, but in general it makes it harder to understand the entire discussion. 2) When there's a significant overlap in readership, it's annoying to make subscribers endure multiple copies of every message. Cross posting announcements is generally not a big deal. Cross posting to pull one list into the conversation on another list can be appropriate when done skillfully. For example, pulling discussion from the netfilter list into kernel-devel in order to reach a larger audience. Cross posting questions to multiple lists is the most egregious abuse. Pick the list most likely to produce a response, post, wait. After an appropriate amount of time try another list. The desire to cross post questions is inherently selfish. It's like picking your nose in public, not a major offense but generally discouraged. Don't be surprised if the most experienced subscribers ignore your question as punishment for making them endure multiple copies. -- "English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark allies, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar." -- Seen on IRC /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
