ANST - threads, subject lines and editing

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

Raven, thank you for attending to line widths and not quoting in this
message!  Speaking only for myself, you have not offended me in the
slightest.

ravensmk at juno.com (Sandy M Koenig) wrote:
> I have suffered through discussions about dead horses, people
> complaining about Timo's Gulf War list,

To cover just that one example: Timo's joke Gulf War list was a
"meta-discussion" -- discussion about what *should* be on the list --
which is pretty applicable to the list, though it should not be
overdone lest people get too tired of it.  (Like, doubtless, I'm
making people tired.)

> I have seen people complain about editing messages, yet I have gone
> through countless new messages with 2 to 4 old messages still in the
> content.

I wish to God some people would get clues on this.

> Yet, when I seem to do these very things, several people, some who
> have complained about the problem, but don't make it a practice
> themselves, have complained about me not editing or maybe even
> changing the subject line.

Now, from what *I've* seen, people complaining about the problems are
generally *not* those committing those ... um, is "transgressions" a
good term?

> when people do the same things I do, yet I am reprimanded, it kind
> of ticks me off.

However, you don't see the private e-mail that gets sent to the
others, so you don't know if they've been reprimanded or no.  In fact,
I try to give feedback that's critical by name in off-list private
e-mail (and have done so).

> I have seen so many off topic things on this list, I don't see what
> a big deal it is to have a little discussion about DS9.

(About DS9: I would have liked to have been surprised by the plot
twist rather than have it be spoiled here, but I don't watch it much
so it doesn't really matter to me.)

It's like littering: It's not one little off-topic message.  It's not
one off-topic thread breaking the seriousness.  It's message after
message after message and I'm reading screen after screen after screen
and scanning page after page of quoting and they haven't added any new
text and I've wasted time scanning the quoting and all they've done is
add a few lines a tthe top and they're not list-related and they're
not funny and good Lord when am I going to reach some content?

Daniel "We few, we unhappy few, we band of bothers" de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel.   Reply to tmcd at crl.com;
    if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com is my work account.
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