rfb@h.cs.cmu.edu (Rick Busdiecker) (12/20/85)
Lately, there's been a lot of discussion on net.sources which has bothered a
lot of people because net.sources was intended for the posting of sources,
not for discussions.
However, it strikes me as rather ludicrous for the people who are offended
by these articles, to post "improper" articles telling other people not to
break the "rules". Definitely a pot-calling-the-kettle-black situation.
NOTE: I know I've done this myself, so there's no need to send mail telling
me that I've done it. I still think it's ludicrous.
But still, the people complaining *do* have a valid point. There are
"rules" (courtesy guidelines?) which are supposed to be followed by people
using the net. Someone reading net.sources should be able to do so without
dealing with some of the discussions that have gotten started up there.
They also shouldn't have to read source requests, or bug reports when there
are newsgroups set aside for such things.
For local bboards at Carnegie-Mellon, people who want to make a notice on a
bboard where it doesn't "belong", (usually) post a very short pointer to the
bboard where the full post appears; Something like "Car for sale -- See
market bboard for details". This works nicely because any follow up to the
notice tends to stay on a more acceptable bboard and tends not to offend
quite as many people. For example, the discussion on net.sources about
rmgrouping net.sources could have, and should have, started as a one line
post to net.sources referring interested readers to either net.news.group,
net.misc, or net.flame.
In addition to not bothering others, this method will probably save you some
personal inconvenience. Don't you just hate getting 20 mail messages saying
"You broke the rules!" I used to send messages like that, and continue to
answer any replies which the pissed off recipients mailed back, because it
annoys me that people can't be courteous. I've quite doing it since then
because the few people who made honest mistakes probably got mail from 19
other people and probably won't do it again and because I felt I was wasting
my time on the assholes since they invariably continue to be assholes.
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Rick Busdiecker ARPA: rfb@h.cs.cmu.edu
Carnegie-Mellon University UUCP: ...!seismo!h.cs.cmu.edu!rfb
Mathematics Department AT&T: (412) 521-1459
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