"*NUL:A"@SU-SCORE.ARPA (A voice of sanity in the wilderness) (03/10/86)
This is enough. The messages in question were sent to the two individuals ("freak" and "turner") who took it upon themselves to repeatedly and publicly harass perfectly innocent individuals who happened to send a message to what certain individuals perceived was the wrong list. They contained a (justifiably) angry demand that these individuals cease and desist from further trashing an already overworked list. Some of us have to worry about such things as the cost of line charges to deliver garbage messages of the form "you idiot, you should have sent this to info-atari-loonies, not info-atari-nerds", or in keeping a mailer at a mail hub afloat enough so that it continues to reliably deliver messages which are reasonably important. It's perhaps understandable that spoiled brat hackers who have never had to worry about such things fail to understand these considerations. However, it is important that the word gets out. Sooner or later the large bulk of these resources -- paid by the US taxpayer at great expense -- will no longer be freely given away. In any case, the messages were sent to only those individuals and not to the entire Atari list. Simple etiquette would have dictated that any commentary or replies would not be directed to the entire Atari list, which presumably would have no interest whatsoever in such matters but which presumably would be interested in seeing the list return to strictly Atari-based content. The result was a reposting of the message to the entire list along with various slanderous commentary. You can say almost anything you want privately, but when something is posted in public it becomes slander or libel. Imagen's corporate lawyers would probably have had a fit if they saw Turner's message; someday somebody will send a public netmail message like this to a less tolerant person who would persue litigation against the sender *and* his employer. The following ground rules should make the use of this (or of any other) mailing list much easier: . never send a message that a totally irrelevant to the mailing list's purpose to a mailing list. This especially includes any expressions of irritation at another list member. . never forward a message that is totally irrelevant to the mailing list's purpose to a mailing list. . when replying to a message on a mailing list, reply only to the sender of the message unless the reply is of interest to the entire mailing list. . never insert the message being replied to in a reply, especially in a message going to a mailing list. This serves no purpose at all other than to add further clutter. The context of the reply should be clear from *your* reply and from various mailer functionalities such as Message-ID. Why the Unix mailer has introduced the ancient long-discredited ARPANET mail misfeature eludes any rational explanation. . when replying to an earlier reply that violates the previous rule, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT make matters worse by adding your own violation. Multi-nested replies containing the entire conversation from day 1 are useless. Perhaps if these rules are followed there would be some semblance of order on this list. The Amiga list doesn't appear to have this problem. -------