On 1/3/08, M. Fioretti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> personally, I have been for years against allowing unsubscribed users
> to post to this or any other OpenOffice mailing list, giving plenty of
> reasons all documented in the archives. I also pointed out time and
> again how, er, shall we say "suboptimal and inefficient" the practice
> of "reposting to the whole list AND the unsubscribed OP a message all
> subscribed users had already downloaded" actually is.
>
> All this is another story, however, really. I have no intention to ask
> again that unsubscribed users are not allowed to post, as I have to
> admit OOo lists are a bit unique from this point of view.
>
> The reasons why I writing today is to point out that OK, it is
> necessary to allow unsubscribed users to post after moderation, but:
>
> 1) it is really, really inefficient to let pass tenths of message with
> highly informative subjects like:
>
> [users] [moderated]
> [users] [moderated] YOU MUST GIVE A SUMMARY HERE
>
> 2) it is MUCH worse when volunteers _answer_ such messages without
> changing the subject to indicate what the actual content is, ie
> making it much more visible both to other subscribers and in
> archive searches.
>
> Moderator(s): may I ask you to *reject* from now on all messages
> without a decent subject, explaining with a standard template to the
> unsubscribed posters that they are much, much more likely to get help
> quick if they bother to spend ten more seconds in that way? You are
> making a disservice to these people letting things as they are.
>
> Does it really make sense, for a volunteer, at least, to open 20
> subject-less messages in the hope that at least one of those message
> contains a question for which that volunteer knows the answer?
> Personally, these days I am opening every tenth of these messages or
> so, deleting right away all the others, and I'll bet that many other
> subscribed users do the same. I do invite all subscribed users to
> delete without reading all such messages from now on, to make the list
> more helpful to unsubscribed users.
>
> Other subscribed volunteers: if you really, really feel this vocation
> to spend a few hours every week playing the "moderated message
> lottery", that is spending 20 minutes every time to find that one
> message which you could have answered in 30 seconds, had it had an
> informative message, that's your time, OK. But if you do NOT change
> that message to something from which all subscribed and unsubscribed
> users can learn and find useful information quickly you, too, are
> doing the community a DISSERVICE. Please stop.
>
> Sure, I have read many times for years the argument that "you can't
> expect that a total computer novice with only one question knows what
> a mailing list is, how to subscribe and unsubscribe, isn't scared or
> pissed off by the large traffic here, etc...". I can accept that, but
> this is something else. OK, never mind enforcing subscription.
>
> But if you just enforce ("how" is a different topic, let's acknowledge
> it's badly needed in the first place) the rule "NO DECENT SUBJECT, NO
> HELP", that is, if you ask unsubscribed users to spend 10 seconds more
> once every question they have, without being flooded with list
> traffic, it's like multiplying by ten or more the number of volunteers
> who PROVIDE THAT HELP. Because you make much faster for ALL OF THEM to
> FIND where they can ACTUALLY help.
>
> Marco
>
> (who feels that a list like this IS essential to the
> success of OOo and FOSS, but also feels again a
> strong, pressing urge to tell everybody willing to
> spend time on volunteer FOSS support to do it anywhere
> else but here)
> --
> Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
> software is used *around* you: http://digifreedom.net/node/84
>
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>
Hello,
As much as I share Marco's frustration with people who do not add a
meaningful subject to their emails, I am not sure I fully agree with his
proposals.
The purpose of this list is to help people who use OpenOffice.org, and these
people need not to be familiar with email writing or netiquette experts.
Many of the people I know and to whom I have proposed to use OpenOffice have
never heard of mailing lists and (unlike me) don't spend their work and
private life writing tens of emails every day. For these people it is
already a big effort to find out the address and write a message and they do
not realize the problems they cause by not including a subject.
I am not saying that I justify the behaviour people who *consistently* fail
to write the subject of their messages or write useless subjects such as "I
have a problem" "please help" "issue with OpenOffice.org" and so on, but
only that I understand why so many messages are "wrong". Please keep in mind
that we (the volunteers) have a quite biased view as we have probably been
using mailing lists for years, and we know all the rules. But think about
your early days: are you sure you never hijacked a thread? never sent
messages with meaningless subjects? I surely made all these mistakes.
Rather than simply ignoring these emails then, they should be
(automatically?) replied with a preformatted message where the user is
invited to post again, this time adding a subject.
something along these lines could do:
"Your message did not include a subject and will be most likely ignored by
the volunteers who provide their support to the users list. You are kindly
invited to send again the message to the list providing a short summary of
the problem in the subject field. Please include the component of the suite
you are experiencing problems with (Writer, Calc, Impress etc...)."
The message may also illustrate the benefits of subscribing, digest mode,
links to netiquette and so on, as long as you don't make it too long ;-)
Cheers,
Michele
