I'm going to make one more comment here, and I don't mean to offend
anyone. We all know that the UUG gets off topic quite often, and I think
that's sometimes a good thing. But as president, I do hear a lot of
complaints, and one that has come up several times is that people think
that the list is being taken advantage of as "help me debug my php code
list". This is the Unix Users Group, and since php is used by many of us
here it's fine if it comes up here and there, but there are other places
to get help for that such as the UPHPU or php.net (or any of the other
1000's of php sites / lists on the net).
Once again, I don't mean to offend anyone, but I'm just saying that some
people are getting frustrated.
Evan, thank you. But, the real problem (in my opinion) is that the BYU UUG is not well defined. It's members either need to chill out or there needs to be some official action taken to decide what the UUG list is going to be about... because "using *nix" is so broad that discussions can be about anything!
The UPHPU, for example, is about PHP, MySQL, Apache (and the implied web development). If you were to ask a CSS question there, it is welcomed. If you were to ask a Perl question there, some might try to help if they could, but it is obviously out of place.
But what about the UUG? the PLUG? These groups are about... ? uh... We don't even know. We can't even decided amongst ourselves. I mean... the name is the Unix group but hardly any of us even use unix; we use Linux. And, what does a *nix group talk about? Just using it? Meaning installing? setting it up? I am not saying the the UUG has to be define or even should... just that it isn't.
If the mailing list is for a social forum where computer users gather to converse about anything... then let's not see another post against someone's post.
If the mailing list is intended to be more specific... about... say... for assistance on projects that are in some way related to the use of *nix,,, then let's say that. Let's post that notice on the website and make everyone aware of it. And then... let's not see another post about buying tickets to the Lord of the Rings premier.
My point is... let's grow up. Let's drop the double-standard and quit wasting time. Let's be mature about these issues. If someone doesn't capitalize and it bothers you... instead of stewing about it month after month and/or talking ill of the person in little groups behind their back, send the person (privately, not to the group) a kind email explaining how they could improve their digital communication style. Stuart send me an email once about not trimming and I have worked very hard to trim my messages ever since. Originally, I non-trimming really didn't bother me and my day is so busy that I really didn't think that I had time to clean the message up. But, not that I have started doing it, I actually really support it. I am not interested in 95% of the posts to this group, but I love being a member, love being aware of what is going on in the *nix community, and love supporting it.
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