On Sat, 5 Aug 2000, Simon Bowden wrote:
> But how is anyone to know if the original sender is subscribed to the list
> or not? And hence whether or not to include them?
True - it's pretty hard to know, particularly if people are lurking and
only popping up to send an occasional message. I guess it's not possible
to send all list mail through a filter that would flag messages as 'sender
is subscribed/not subscribed to the list'? (Even if possible, I imagine
it'd be a hassle to set up, and not really worth it). But what I'd say is,
if you're not subscribed to the list then stick something in the message
to let people know to send directly to you (or perhaps disallow
mail from non-subscribers unless approved by the admin people -
if this is possible with the current setup, and if admin want
lots of mail to be approved in their in boxes ;-). Anyway, is there a lot
of mail from people not subscribed? And of the mail from people who aren't
subscribed, how much needs a reply anyway - things like announcements
which may not come from subscribers have all the info you need in them
anyway. And it really isn't necessary to respond to Japanese spam, unless
you have an amusing way of using Perl to translate it into a series of
rude words. ;-)
> Maybe something more like if you know they are a subscriber, then only
> send to slug, otherwise, better to play safe.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying, and it does make sense. In response
though, IMHO it's only good manners to be subscribed to a list before
you post to it. Kind of like the difference between shouting
through a window and going in to join the party - you can hardly expect
the party to stop everything and rush outside if you're not willing to
get in there and dance a bit. If you want a good response, you've got to
walk right in with a 6 pack, or at the least a bottle of Cinzano,
not stand outside yelling in the window that nobody will talk to
you. There's probably an RFC that mentions subscribing to lists before
posting to them, it seems like the sort of thing that would be in there
somewhere. Or have a read of Emily Postnews (still around at
<http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html>, actually surprised me, I last
looked her up about 6 years ago - pretty funny stuff :-). I guess it all
comes down to - what is the purpose of this list? As I see it, it's a
discussion list for all things related to Linux, particularly in Sydney
and Australia, and more particularly for SLUG stuff. Note
_discussion_. You can't have a discussion if responses are posted outside
the list. OK, some simple things are probably best posted directly to the
sender and not the list at all - 'I just installed Linux on my computer,
it said bash, so I bashed it up, now it doesn't work' - but I think that
generally most things should go just to the list for discussion and
elucidation, and if the sender isn't subscribed, they should have said so
- I still can see no reason for posting outside the list without the
request of a sender to the list (particularly not for posting the same
response to both the list and the original sender).
Sorry, this has gone on far longer than I meant it to. Vaguely wondering
if it might be a good time to ask subscribers what they expect from the
list. What are you looking for when you subscribe to the Slug list? Could
be useful in focusing the FAQ - 'this is what we're about' sort of
thing.
Tom
--
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More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
