tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) (03/12/91)
At the request of someone in email, I'm posting my rn magic for sending someone an automatic message gently chiding them for their misplaced posting into alt.sources. I think that this may be the only way to get the group cleaned up, since moderating it would defeat part of its purpose. A user who gets a dozen reminders from the net that they posted to the wrong place will not be quick to repeat the error. I used something like this on all the folks last week, and of the replies to it, all but one were like "oh -- I didn't know that" or "oops -- thought it went to alt.sources.d" and thanked me. However, one individual (not to name names, but it was "David G. Grubbs" <dgg@ksr.com>) replied angrily that he could damn well post what he wanted where he wanted, and this just part of being an unmoderated group, so to buzz off. Peer pressure might be the only remedy to intransigents like this. Here's what to do: first, put this in your .rnmac file: ^t !Mail -s "Your misposted article %i in %n (was: %s)" %t < ~/.sources-complaint\n For ease of posting this to the news system, there are no control characters there. ^t is caret-t, although it will translate into a real control-T, and the \n is a backslash-n, which will turn into a real newline. Now, place the following text, or whatever you feel is appropriate, into the file ~/.sources-complaint: ============= begin cut here ============== You posted the referenced article to the newsgroup alt.sources, which is best used only for source code. Your posting was not source code. Please post requests to alt.sources.wanted, while comments and discussion should go to the alt.sources.d newsgroup. Perhaps your posting was unintentional. When following up to articles in alt.sources, please check the newsgroups line carefully. Many posters to alt.sources neglect to include a reasonable follow-up line redirecting responses to alt.sources.d. Thanks for doing your part as a good net citizen. Angry replies to this message will be summarily ignored. [This message automatically generated.] ============= end cut here ============== Then all you have to do is hit ^T when you read a mis-posted message in alt.sources, and rn will do the rest. This works for the threaded flavor of rn (trn) as well. Note the mail command uses ucbmail; adjust accordingly. --tom
tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) (03/12/91)
From the keyboard of emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti):
:In article <1991Mar11.162930.8008@convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
:
: At the request of someone in email, I'm posting my rn magic for
: sending someone an automatic message gently chiding them for
: their misplaced posting into alt.sources.
:
: I think that this is a mistake.
:
: Much better would be to put more sources in alt.sources, so that
: people learn by example what to expect there, and don't mistakenly ask
: questions. For instance, if you see sources in some other group,
: repost them into alt.sources. Or post something of your own!
It doesn't work to post sources. Sources get posted. People don't
figure it out.
: Auto-hassling scripts strike me as an unnecessary annoyance likely to
: cause animosity. better would be to either ignore the posting
: completely , or answer the request by mail as best you can and gently
: chide the user into changing their ways.
I used to ignore them. I became annoyed, because it didn't get better.
In fact, it got worse. The solution to the annoyance was to send them
mail.
After sending a dozen and a half of these personal responses last week,
and receiving positive feedback from all but one, I boiled what I
was saying down into one message, and posted the result. What's so
annoying about that?
--tomtchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) (03/13/91)
From the keyboard of sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey): :I hate form letters (and computer telephone calls and ...) with such a :passion that I'd be likely to mail you 10 copies of it back and then :slap on a mailbox filter to keep you out. : :Non-sources in alt.sources aren't welcome, but I don't approve of form :letters as a method. Please find a better way. No one (but one) complained when they didn't know they were form letters. I actually got lots of nice mail back. I've also noticed that the drivel in alt.sources is down this week since the jihad, er mailing, began. --tom