Re: List Garbage. Is there too much?

From: Cameron Mac Millan (casm@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue 25 Apr 2000 - 10:22:31 UTC

  • Next message: Donna Lindsey 4519: "Re: Unsubscribe"

    Before we all start jumping on the 'this list sucks' bandwagon, I'd like
    to point a few things out.

    1) 95% of the traffic on this list is spam, at least by my criteria. I
    own exactly one Peugeot: a 1985 505S. I don't *care* about other 505s,
    504s, 405s, 604s, or others. And I'm willing to bet that most everyone
    else on this list is in a similar position: 95% of what *they* receive
    is irrelevant to their needs; in fact, you could say that the amount of
    Peugeot-related spam easily outweighs the amount of non-Peugeot-related
    spam. There's no way for me to stem the tide of this irrelevant
    traffic, because - guess what? - THAT'S LIFE ON A MAILING LIST. So,
    before everyone gets all het-up over off-topic posts, consider that most
    posts are off-topic, at least as far as most people concerned.

    2) There is no way to stop people from posting off-topic messages.
    There just isn't. Encouraging self-restraint is fine, but if someone's
    going to do it, then they're going to do it - you can't make their
    computer stop them before they hit 'send'. Similarly, unless we're
    talking about a flood of off-topic messages, how much effort does it
    really take to highlight the offending message and hit the 'delete' key?
     Not a great deal, and certainly not enough to be worth getting stressed
    over. Again, that's life on a list. It happens on this list and every
    one of the six other mailing lists I'm subscribed to. Please, just live
    with it. There's nothing that can be done about it.

    3) This thread is perpetuating one of the irrelevant threads (and, yes,
    I am aware of the irony in this). If you want an off-topic subject to
    quietly die a death, ignore it. Don't reply to the thread or the
    author. It'll take care of itself, or result in the same two lunatics
    arguing the same point to death.

    Now, I thought the idea was to get back on track here...



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue 25 Apr 2000 - 17:26:22 UTC