This is not meant to pick on any individual subscriber, they may
not even be aware (never learned how to use email properly). But
it's something that bothers me, because it breaks the very point
of having a mailing list where several subscribers work together,
can help each other, or learn from each other. Which is rather
sad, and totally not desirable. So I have to vent this, hoping
that the problem can get fixed. To then get back to a normal
state where people help each other.
There is a recent(?) climb in the number of messages where the
headers look like this:
| From: A user's name via sigrok-devel <sigrok-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
| To: sigrok-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
| Subject: [sigrok-devel] some subject
| Reply-To: user's name again <u...@example.com>
Which is so totally wrong. For those who are not fluent in the
interpretation of email headers:
- The sender pretends to be the list. Which is not true. Could be
seen as impersonating somebody else, to gain some benefit.
- The sender requests(!) that responses go to his private
account. Which excludes all other subscribers. Unless the
responding person is extra careful, and undoes the broken setup
of the sender's transmission. (Requires spotting the issue in
the first place. Adding extra work to the process of responding
in a useful manner. Reducing the willingness to do that again
as the broken condition becomes more and more popular.)
Think about it. Somebody asks others for help. And expects to be
given the response on a silver platter. And hides the responses
from other participants. Which to me looks like: Consuming other
people's resources for their personal entertainment or progress,
wasting the time and energy of those who responded, by having
them answer that same question again when the next person comes
along. Other subscribers cannot see what's communicated, cannot
benefit from the response, and cannot contribute to the thread
(since in fact there is no thread, just some leecher shouting out
a request while no response is to be seen).
Which totally contradicts the very idea of having a public
communication among several persons who can share their forces
and achieve greater progress when working together.
Above I suggested that it's not a (group of) individuals who do
this consciously. I'd even assume that these people are totally
not aware of which impression they leave, and may be surprised
that it could even get interpreted this way. And granted, the
above presentation of which impression this could leave is extra
harsh for the purpose of illustration. It's what the observed
behaviour results in when other participants are neither aware,
or don't know how to fix the sender's broken setup. So I wonder:
What's the origin of that stupid and unsocial email setup which
results in the violation of the mailing list's foundation? Is
this some extra popular mail user agent while its authors just
are not aware? Is it a service provider doing stupid things? Was
kind of shocked to see that even git-send-email(1) traffic was
affected. Which makes me suspect that it's an ISP or mail
provider playing games.
Can the source of this problem get identified, which makes the
affected senders look bad without their even being aware? And can
it get fixed? So that useful and helpful list communication is
possible, instead of ending up in a maze of personal service
requests and a deserted list?
The ISP manipulated(?) git commit transmission even results in a
total misattribution of the work that the submitter has spent on
an issue, trying to help the project. Which isn't desirable
either, for several reasons. Also adds extra work on those who
try to accept this contribution, again reducing the odds of
seeing it happen. The time could have been spent on something
useful instead.
virtually yours
Gerhard Sittig
--
If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above
ask your parents or an adult to help you.
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