*sigh* I didn't intend to post in this thread, until I saw this one...
Anthony Atkielski <anthony(_at_)atkielski(_dot_)com> wrote:
I'm really not interested in the opinions of people
who continuously rant and spam off-topic posts and
That's what killfiles and filters are for.
[...]
because it is technologically quite possible for each person to censor his own
mail at his recipient end--it is not necessary to censor at the source, unless
your real objective be to prevent _others_ from reading anything of which
_you_
do not approve.
Yes, and one of the simplest, most commonly used, most effective
recipient-end filters is: WHICH MAILING LISTS DO I SUBSCRIBE TO.
You seem to support the violation of that filter and advocate its
replacement with much less useful filters.
Your attitude is one that I occasionally see whenever anyone is trying
to justify pointless spam and off topic posts. When people get some
political bug and feel that *everyone* in the world needs to know
about some awful new law that's about to be passed, and post about it
to the cat care mailing list and the road trip mailing list and the
Apache bugs mailing list and ... everything they happen to know about.
What is the purpose of having multiple mailing lists? In your world,
shouldn't there just be one big mailing list that everyone on the
Internet is subscribed to, and everyone posts everything there, and
people set up filters on their end to limit what they see to what
they're interested in?
Personally, I do want to know about certain awful new laws that get
proposed (or passed) in the USA. That's why I subscribe, for example,
to the ACLU's announcement list, and the EFF's announcement list, and
Planned Parenthood's announcement list. But if someone starts posting
those same messages to the mailing list of a band I like, I'll yell at
them. That's not appropriate for that list, and whether or not I, or
anyone else, wants to see it, is irrelevant. We all have the ability
to subscribe to other lists if we want to, and MANY OF US DO.
Every mailing list has some general purpose. We subscribe to lists
based on what we believe their purposes are. If you support the free
and open dissemination of ideas, and the ability of people to be heard
and of people to find and hear what they want, then you *support* the
enforcement of list policy and the limiting of off-topic spewage.
Doing otherwise is like trying to find ways to sneak past people's
filters. "Aha, I'll find all the people who only wanted to talk about
cats, and didn't want to see any messages about the government coverup
of UFOs in Nevada, and I'll make them see those messages anyway, by
posting to their cat list!" How is that different from someone
delibarately varying their From: line in order to get past your
personal killfile so they can send you messages they know you don't
want to see?
Yes, this particular thread is off topic if taken out of context.
Fortunately a single thread is easy to ignore, as long as it doesn't
recur repeatedly and keep spawning new threads. Could we please avoid
that? [Jim Fleming, too, would not have been a problem if he'd only
posted his irrelevant stuff a couple of times, and then just gotten
back to participating sensibly in on-topic discussions]
-- Cos (Ofer Inbar) -- cos(_at_)aaaaa(_dot_)org
http://cos.polyamory.org/
-- Exodus Communications -- cos(_at_)exodus(_dot_)net
http://www.exodus.net/
"We all misuse the net for personal gain, one way or another."
-- Larry Wall <lwall(_at_)netlabs(_dot_)com>