Re: rampant offtopic and offensive posts to debian-user
On Fri, May 18, 2007 16:41:49 PM -0400, Joey Hess (joeyh@debian.org) wrote:
> Frans, Cord, Martin, Pascal,
>
> I'm writing the listmasters because reading debian-user has become
> nearly unbearable for me (one of the sadly few DDs who bothers to
> read our user lists) due to volume and offensiveness/repetativeness
> of offtopic posts there.
Thanks Joey for publicly addressing this issue! I had decided to write
an almost identical complain, so you saved me some time.
I joined this list around Christmas and, since then, I have found it a
real pain in the neck for the very reason you have just signalled to
the listmasters. Ron, Celejar, Judd, Roberto, Michael, Michelle and
surely a few others I have forgotten (yes, it's necessary to make
names at this point) have flooded this list with *hundreds* of totally
unnecessary messages, regardless of what I think of their contents.
So far, all the reactions I've seen from them every time somebody
tried to make them stop are some more or less explicit combination of:
1) The list policy doesn't explicitly say that I can'd to this
2) Obviously everybody else has a flat rate broadband connection as I
have, so nobody *PAYS* per byte or minute to download all my rants
3) If you were not some hopeless moron, but already a really competent
Linux user with lots of spare time as I obviously am, you would
have already done this or that to filter off my rants. Since it is
possible to do that filtering, I can babble as much as I want here.
4) Etch isn't out yet, so there are very few help requests and I'm
real bored, you know?
#1, if true, should be changed as soon as possible. If there is *any*
interest to keep this list both useful for _newbies_ and a place where
developers can help and interact directly with end users, that is.
#2 speaks for itself
#3, regardless of its technical feasibility, really sounds like
"unless you already are very competent with Linux, go somewhere else,
this is not really a user support list" but this is not the real
issue. This attitude is the *EXACT* equivalent of "since YOU can buy
and wear earphones or ear plugs, WE can yodel as much as we like in
this public library, as long as we... yell [OT] before
starting". This speaks volumes (expecially when combined with #2)
about the maturity and good manners of those who make such
assertions, not to mention their capability of stopping without
external support
#4 was a pathetic lie, as Joey already pointed out:
> Note that all this traffic occurred _after_ etch's release, at one of
> the periods when more users than normal are presumably trying to get
> help on the list.
In conclusion, I agree 100% with Joey here:
> excessive OT posts can also poison the signal/noise ratio, and bring
> a small clique of frequent OT posters together to the detriment of
> the intended purpose of the list. I feel that is what is happening
> here.... Yet the main offenders ignore this and continue to post as
> they please:
Joey posted one thread, but there are plenty of others. See "sponge
burning" in January/February, "REALLY OT: News Flash", "A
Republican!!!!!!" and "a dumb query? pls humor me" / "bio fuels" in
February, "bread prices and economics" in March, "a dumb query?
pls humor me" and "sponge burning" again in April...
Please make this stop, thanks.
Marco
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