On Sunday 06 July 2008 15:02, Paul Louden wrote:

> Antony Stone wrote:
> > That's all very well, but I do find it rather petty that people will post
> > a reply which *only* tells people about list rules, rather than (a) being
> > helpful and trying to answer the question and also (b) reminding the
> > original poster of the list rules.
>
> So, what you're saying is "If you don't know the answer to a question,
> you aren't allowed to remind the asker that the list has rules." I find
> this somewhat difficult: What if someone asks a question that doesn't
> belong on the list in the first place? Or what if nobody knows the answer to
> the question? Can we no longer remind the person of the rules?

There is a further option - ignore the question if you cannot answer it, wait
to see if anyone else *does* answer it, and then if that answer didn't itself
contain a reminder about the posting rules, and you think it's important, add
your comment as a further reply. If the helpful reply also contained a
reminder, then it was useful in two ways at once.

If no answer gets posted at all, simply ignore the original posting
permanently - leave it as an orphaned thread, and keep the list quieter as a
result.

Basically I'm just trying to suggest raising the signal-to-noise ratio of the
list (and its archives) by encouraging information-bearing postings (those
which answer questions) and discouraging those which provide no useful
information for users of Rockbox.

Antony.

-- 
Douglas was one of those writers who honourably failed to get anywhere with 
'weekending'.  It put a premium on people who could write things that lasted 
thirty seconds, and Douglas was incapable of writing a single sentence that 
lasted less than thirty seconds.
 - Geoffrey Perkins, about Douglas Adams
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