At 05:18 PM 4/28/97 +0200, Stephen R. van den Berg wrote:
Even though it is sometimes hard to suppress one's enthousiasm once a
recipe or .procmailrc file works as intended, please try to avoid these
kinds of "thank you" submissions to this mailinglist.
If you wish to thank someone for helping you, do so in a *private*
message to that person only (or, even if more persons are involved, send
the message to *them*, not to the list).
The volume on this mailinglist already is very high, and raising it
even more with these spurious "thank you" messages only clutters matters.
Hmmmm. I have sort of mixed feelings about this.
Yes, I like to see clutter avoided.
However, considering that sometimes wrong answers get posted (I plead
guilty myself), and sometimes threads just disappear without apparent
resolution, it can be valuable information that something did work
(although even that doesn't "prove" that a "right" answer was given).
This could be especially useful to someone searching the archives
a few months in the future. Was the last post the solution? Or did
the thread just disappear and get finished in private email?
Any such message should be very short, and quote almost nothing,
if done right, which should reduce any irritation to the rest of us.
In addition, an occasional public thanks may be worthwhile to reinforce
the dedication of the several people who donate much time and mental
energy to solve other peoples' problems here.
Also, the "thanks, that solved my problem" has more than once stopped
me from adding further to a thread, so it can actually save bandwidth.
Just my two cents. I do see your point, but at the moment I seem to
notice far more clutter from "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" messages
as well as "man pages? what man pages?" posts than I do from
"thank you" posts.
Cheers,
Stan