* Dave Sill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Jamin Collins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think newbies generally respond better to reward than punishment. E.g.,
> instead of:
> Your mailer is broken.
> I'd say something like:
> Please don't include messages you're replying to as appendages to
> your own messages. It's a waste of bytes, and it annoys many
> people--most of whom are too polite and/or busy to bother
> complaining. Instead, quote small passages, prefixing each line with
> ">". This puts the relevant information right where it's needed, and
> makes it easy for people to tell who said what.
1. This is the most basic netiquette. Last time I checked, this list was
not <news:microsoft.we.give.a.toss.about.standards>?
2. Been there, done that. I still don't like the "fuck off, geek"
t-shirt I got.
3. If this is a technical discussion list, clean and easily accessible
archival of information is paramount. Want me to count the "possible
followup"s and broken threads caused by missing reference headers?
> The former approach *might* work, but is more likely to offend the
> newbie. The latter is polite and informative. An educated, unoffended
> newbie is much more likely to want to change his ways.
That might have been true in 1994 (when I trimmed by beautifully crafted
2-screen signature back to 4 lines after being flamed by 99% of that
mailinglist). But this is the 00's. You cannot tell people to "fix their
MIME settings" or use another MUA because they are so damned dense they
believe that the internet comes with their Windos-CD and Outlook is
configured correctly out-of-the-box.
I don't mind helping, but I also don't mind giving back to the net
what the net gave to me: rough justice. We're talking about an MTA, a
tool which, if used by lackwits, is quite likely to wreak havoc on
unsuspecting admins. Maybe a "qmail-newbies"-list might be warranted?
--
Robin S. Socha <http://socha.net/>
