Re: rampant offtopic and offensive posts to debian-user

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

Andrei Popescu wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 11:57:42AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
>  
>   
> > Joey is, I believe, referring to a healthy level of off-topic
> > discussions on *any* list, not to creating a specific area for
> > "off-topic" messages. For the messages to be "social lubricant", they
> > need to be *interspersed* with the on-topic discussions in a way that
> > doesn't detract from the discussions.
> >
> > If the volume of messages in an off-topic thread is large enough that
> > an entire separate list is being considered, the off-topic diversion
> > is already beyond the level Joey describes as "social lubricant" and
> > into the level of disruptive noise.
> >     
>
> So people who "know" each other for years on this list are condemned to 
> keep discussions (mostly) on-topic or leave the forum? How is this 
> benefic to the community?
>   
Especially when you take a look at the archives and notice that some of 
those protesting the most contribute very little technically, while 
those they complain about post very useful information - after looking 
through Roberto's posts, I conclude that anybody who killfiles him is 
simply an idiot (and that the person who recently said he was doing so - 
not naming any names - hasn't posted an answer to a substantive question 
in at least 3 months).