Re: gEDA-user: POLL: On politeness

[Karel Kulhavy <clock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 07:06:51PM -0500, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Feb 24, 2006, at 6:31 PM, Frank wrote:
> >I was just wondering if you guys think think the emails of Marc Price
> >are a breach of politeness etiquette and dimishes the quality of this
> >mailing list? Should this person be removed from the mailing list? I
> >include his postings below.
> >
> >Personally, I found that the regulars here to be extremely helpful and
> >they don't deserve that kind of crap.
> 
>   I don't know Marc personally, but I strongly suspect it's just a 
> matter of presentation and perception...I don't think the guy actually 
> intends to be crappy.
> 
>   Many people, especially net-newbies, type into an email composition 
> window without thinking of how things are going to be taken on the 
> other end.  Even after communicating via email for 20+ years, I am 
> guilty of this myself sometimes...so I can easily envision a 
> less-net-experienced person (no offense Marc) easily falling into this 
> trap.
> 
>   Personally, while some of his questions are FAQs, I admire the energy 
> with which he approaches this stuff and I think all of us should do our 
> best to help him out in any way we can.  Today, it seems most young 

I am getting tons of this on Ronja - I get rid of them by placing
appropriate answer into appropriate place of the guide. It's easy. And I
don't need to think about usability. The newbies are thinking for me. I
am actually even incompetent in the field of usability and I don't care
:)

We have one who even regularly behaves like a troll. In this case I do
this:
1) if the question makes sense, I answer (or point to FAQ).
2) if the question is syntactically, semantically or otherwise incorrect
or doesn't make sense, then I load my brain with the input and find
nearest maningful idea to the input that is novel. Then I expand the
idea in the e-mail

If you don't do these things, the attack on your mailing list will be
successful - you will be crapflooded with trivial questions and/or
trolling-like questions and SNR will go down.

CL<

> people go through their lives caring about nothing but Nintendo, "bling 
> bling", and "reality TV"...and grow up caring about nothing but Bud 
> Light and NASCAR.  Seeing someone approaching something like this with 
> such enthusiasm is very refreshing and gives me hope for the future.
> 
>            -Dave
> 
> --
> Dave McGuire
> Cape Coral, FL