From: Christopher Chaltain <cchaltain_at_austin.rr.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:29:30 -0500

On 6/20/2009 7:29 PM, Guest wrote:
> All I'm saying is that the situation with respect to top-posting
> newbies is *completely hopeless*. If you have a mailing list, people
> are going to mess up. If you yell at them, they're not going to get
> it, and they'll eventually go away. If you don't mind, then there's
> no problem. But the bottom line is that whatever you write in the
> mailing list guidelines is going to be completely ignored by 99% of
> posters, no matter how right you are to have included it, and no
> matter how wrong they are to do so. That's all I'm saying.

Maybe I'm in the 1%, but when I subscribed to the mailing list, I sought
out the list etiquette and I've tried to follow it scrupulously ever
since I joined this list. If the list had been on Yahoo or Google Groups
then I probably wouldn't have bothered to pay so much attention to the
list etiquette, but since it was hosted on the Robckbox site and seemed
to be hosted by the Rockbox development team, I figured it was my
responsibility to follow the list etiquette. After all it is there list.
If I visit a family's home, and they want me to take my shoes off at the
door, then I take my shoes off at the door. I don't argue with them
about it. I don't agree that top posting is superior, but I follow it on
this mailing list nevertheless.

It sounds like you're saying that it's OK to have a list etiquette, and
it's OK for posters to ignore the list etiquette and the only solution
is to have the owners of the list ignore the fact that they have a list
etiquette that they want people to follow. Maybe this is the only
solution, but I hope it isn't. I don't agree that 99% of the posters
ignore the list etiquette, but it might seem so given how vocal they are
about it. Maybe the moderators of the list could be more cajoling in
their efforts to get people to follow the list etiquette, so it doesn't
come across as so draconian, but it seems like posters could also just
follow the etiquette, at least once their reminded of it. I think both
sides of this argument could take things a lot less personally.

I've often thought the solution was for someone to set up another
mailing list, on Yahoo or Google Groups for example, where their was no
list etiquette and posters could just prattle on about whatever they
wanted to. That might take away from this list, but it might also save
it too.

BTW, I'm trying a new editor, so I hope the quoting above is preserved.

-- 
Christopher
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe: http://cool.haxx.se/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rockbox
FAQ:         http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GeneralFAQ
Etiquette:   http://www.rockbox.org/mail/etiquette.html

Received on 2009-06-21