Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 13:21:09 +1030 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Peter Kieser <pfak@telus.net> Cc: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com>, advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [bsd-advocacy] Re: Draft: Proposed FreeBSD PubRel project Charter Message-ID: <20030130025109.GJ1007@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <1043882579.677.14.camel@sharpie> References: <002801c2c7c7$968abfd0$0502000a@sentinel> <3E382558.8000508@centtech.com> <1043867511.677.3.camel@sharpie> <1043867599.677.6.camel@sharpie> <3E382989.1040205@centtech.com> <7r4r7rinil.r7r@localhost.localdomain> <1043882579.677.14.camel@sharpie>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] Extraneous text removed. Resequenced. On Wednesday, 29 January 2003 at 15:23:00 -0800, Peter Kieser wrote: > On Wed, 2003-01-29 at 14:45, Gary W. Swearingen wrote: >> I just joined this list. The five messages of this thread which I just >> downloaded used 1284 lines for 22 lines of original text. >> >> Am I wrong to note that? Is there no need to worry about anybody's costs >> of transmission and storage? Or readers need to scroll messages to search >> for embedded comments which aren't there? >> >> Also, >> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/eresources.html#ERESOURCES-MAILa >> says only that the list is "FreeBSD Evangelism". It has no >> charter. If a regular will write one up, I'll wait for others to >> improve on it for a couple of days and then I'll paste it into a >> PR, etc. Well, I'd call that a charter. If you want to come up with an expansion on it, that's reasonable, but in general we keep the charter statements pretty short. > I guess we can probably take this as some kind of flamer. I don't see that. I think he has a good point. I see nothing to suggest flames. > No, we really don't care about the costs of transmission or > storage. I myself have an unmetered T1, so it doesn't really matter > what I use, when I use it. Also storage isn't a big deal, what is > 1284 lines of text amount to? 2KB max for a file. That may be the case. I receive plenty of mail every day, and neither the costs nor the storage worry me, but that isn't to say it's the case for everybody. What does worry me is the (intel)legibility. The message which started this thread was so mutilated that I gave up trying to read it. Messages with components out of sequence (like yours) are also a pain to read, which is why I've gone to the trouble of resequencing. > If you dont like how we conduct ourselves on this list, then please > unsubscribe, and save us the hassle of writing an email to you as a > flamer, and explaining that we "just do it" this way. Well, in fact, there are some mild suggestions for how to write mail messages, and Gary's right on target with them. http://www.lemis.com/Howto-ask-questions contains some recommendations for FreeBSD-questions: 7. Include relevant text from the original message. Trim it to the minimum, but don't overdo it. It should still be possible for somebody who didn't read the original message to understand what you're talking about. 8. Use some technique to identify which text came from the original message, and which text you add. I personally find that prepending ``> '' to the original message works best. Leaving white space after the ``> '' and leave empty lines between your text and the original text both make the result more readable. 9. Put your response in the correct place (after the text to which it replies). It's very difficult to read a thread of responses where each reply comes before the text to which it replies. 10. Most mailers change the subject line on a reply by prepending a text such as ``Re: ''. If your mailer doesn't do it automatically, you should do it manually. 11. If the submitter didn't abide by format conventions (lines too long, inappropriate subject line), please fix it. In the case of an incorrect subject line (such as ``HELP!!??''), change the subject line to (say) ``Re: Difficulties with sync PPP (was: HELP!!??)''. That way other people trying to follow the thread will have less difficulty following it. In such cases, it's appropriate to say what you did and why you did it, but try not to be rude. If you find you can't answer without being rude, don't answer. > Other then that, this was just about as productive as the 22 lines > of original text that are in some of the mailing messages. Get used > to it. Are we here to "get used to it" or promote FreeBSD? The list charter says the latter. Badly written mail messages don't normally get a mention. People do get used to them. I'm so used to them that I normally delete them unread. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Is that the purpose of sending mail? Greg -- When replying to this message, please take care not to mutilate the original text. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/email.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20030130025109.GJ1007>