SC - Why people should use Email instead of posting (was Re: off list was ...)

[david friedman]

At 11:39 PM -0500 2/4/01, Philip & Susan Troy wrote:

>Sorry, I neglected to add the word "SARCASM" to the subject line <g> .
>See, I've been on this list a long time; there are probably five or six
>people currently subscribed who've been around as long as I have, and
>for that entire period of time, I've always been perplexed at the
>bizarre tribal custom of sending private mail to a single person via a
>listserv to which hundreds are subscribed, but either aren't supposed to
>read, or are supposed to pretend it used no bandwidth, rather than
>simply inserting the real e-mail addy of the person you're addressing,
>so it really will have some pretense of privacy.

I think Adamantius is being too subtle.

This list has very high traffic--high enough to drive off of it a 
substantial number of people who are interested in the subject. A 
major reason it has such high traffic is that a lot of the posts 
consist of one person saying something to one other person--usually 
something of little or no interest to anyone else--and sending it to 
the entire list. If all the people who did that instead sent the 
message as email to the intended recipient, the total number of 
messages each of us has to wade through in order to find things of 
interest would be sharply reduced--roughly cut in half. That would 
make it much easier to read the list.

- -- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/