RE: New Procmail Recipe Forum at UNIX.COM for the Procmail Communit y

At 18:10 2003-02-15 -0500, Tim Bass wrote:

> needs to be pointed out and since I have protected and admin'ed the UNIX.COM
> domain since 1992, spent many thousands in its legal defense and
FWIW, I don't recall anybody (including myself) making threats against 
unix.com, legal or otherwise, so your past legal situations there should 
have no bearing on this matter.
> administration to keep it open and commercial free,
There are plenty of non-commercial sites (and commercial ones too) which 
don't resort to popping in on another list and posting how you can head 
OVER THERE to do the exact same thing you're doing on the list you're 
already on.  That, singularly, is the most offensive thing about your 
post.  It also implies that this list hasn't already been serving this 
exact same need.
Picture walking into a car dealership and passing out cards for your 
competing dealership.  Also, hand your cards out to the pseudo-employees of 
the dealership asking them to come sort of work for you, providing support 
to your users.  Or, to shed the commercial aspect which might be a hangup 
for someone not wanting to see that as a valid analogy, wander into a 
support forum for one distribution of *nix, inplying that theirs is 
inadequate (with no real explanation as to why), by telling them to come 
check your other distro out.
Surely, if someone did either of these things, it wouldn't be unexpected 
for someone to call thre perpetrator on it?  Surely anyone opposed to 
_SPAM_ would recognize the inappropriatness of using it to advertise an 
anti-spam forum?
That is exactly the reason I made reference to spamarrest.com in my post - 
they're a site presumably dedicated to fighting spam, but for some 
unfathomable reason, they don't see the wrongness in using spam (and, in 
their case, an opt-out list, not just hit-and-run) to promote their service.
> thinks that responding to Sean's attack and bullying puts me in the same
> category, you need to re-examine your thought processes:
I re-read my post, and I still can't find anywhere where I made a personal 
attack on you.  If voicing disapproval of your advertising technique 
qualifies as bullying, then I'm guilty.  If it had been any other spammer, 
I'd have just hauled off and reported the spam to the various blacklists, 
but instead, I chose to respond here.  Apparently in the misguided 
expectation that you might recognize that it was inappropriate and might 
avoid using the same technique again, or elsewhere.
I'm guessing that recommending that someone adjust their diet or take their 
meds isn't considered a personal attack these days?  IMO, that sort of 
response is just as hypocritical as spamming about an anti-spam resource.
I'd offer you a shovel, but you seem to be digging a hole for yourself 
quite handily already.
> I briefly and kindly entered your Procmail community and posted a note
> because I thought there might be some people in this community who might
> enjoy participating in a special forum for Procmail recipe I just set up at
> the UNIX.COM forums.
You seem to forget that there is already a procmail forum, which you had no 
problem finding and posting your advertisement for your new webforum on.
If you'd been participating here to some detectable level in the past year 
or two, your post would have come off a LOT different.  But you haven't 
been a participant (not in over 4 years anyway).  You haven't raised issues 
about how this forum could be improved, nothing.
Further, here you are stating how you don't participate in unmoderated 
mail-based discussion lists.  Except apparently, when their subscribers 
represent a target audience for YOUR webforums, then you can find it in 
yourself to post to an email list.  With that revelation, your 
advertisement seems even more inappropriate.
I understand you don't agree with me on these points, but if you took a 
moment to consider these points, and perhaps admit to yourself that they 
could be legitimate issues in the war on spam, you might gain some insight 
as to why I responded the way I did.
You should also re-read the fourth and fifth paragraphs of my original 
message.  They don't read like the antisocial contributions of a net.bully.
> There was no malice intended and the original message stands alone and speaks
> for itself, as well as the bullying and antisocial attack that was the 
> response to the kindness offered by the UNIX.COM community.
I wouldn't begin to suggest that the unix.com community was responsible for 
your post here, just as the other members of procmail are not responsible 
for my post in response to your advertisement.
> You can read our rules and you can see that this type of bullying is 
> strictly against our rules and always has been, see RULE #1 here:
[snip]

I'm afraid I can't post a link to a similar rule which discourages 
spamming, or namecalling, but many people understand that such things are 
taboo and usually it goes without requiring specific mention.  In any 
event, I'm not quite sure how unix.com's participation rules justify the 
method used for advertising those forums outside of unix.com itself.
If you were posting how you've got a searchable archive of recipes which 
your users have contributed to, and which people here might find useful, 
that would have come off totally different (though, there IS a 
procmail-announce list that many people totally forget exists - and, AFAIK, 
it is moderated).  That isn't the case however: you spewed an advertisement 
for people to come and join some other site to do, in effect, exactly what 
they're already doing here.
My comments in my original post about issues with webmail, as well as in a 
followup to another post here citing other issues, were not a personal 
attack -they were offered up as constructive criticism of why, in of all 
places, a technical discussion list for an email tool, a web-based forum is 
problematic.
> word of advise from someone who as admin privileges in a community of 24,000
With an average of less than 1.5 posts per member, and _one_ registered 
user logged in right now, it's a lively place I might add.
There may be a bit of a privacy concern in advertising the identifies of 
newly-subscribed users for the world to see right off of your main page 
(with a link to their profile even).  This doesn't pose a privacy problem 
for myself as I am not a member there (and, as you've pointed out, my 
strong opposition to spam disqualifies me from joining), but a user here 
who shall be referred to only as "the whipped one" (only in jest of course) 
might be interested.
> users that grows daily (and has NEVER had a flame war on UNIX.COM ...)
Webarchive edit privledges can be handy, but most discussion lists with 
legal counsel choose to not edit posts because it carries certain legal 
baggage associated with what you choose to post or not.  Note that I am not 
a practicing attourney, and am not offering this up as legal advice - it is 
merely the insight I have from witnessing and paricipating in various legal 
disputes over statements made on discussion lists (yes, even _technical_ ones).
Moderated lists are handy too, but not so much for technical lists, where 
the moderation approval process can sharply limit the turnaround of 
technical material.  Post a grievous typo in a recipe, and realize it after 
re-reading the post, but find that the moderator headed off to bed right 
after approving your flawed ruleset, so your correction sits in their inbox 
waiting approval the following morning...
> candid, I forgot that there are still people on the net who think that
> sitting in a chair behind a glass screen permits them to bully and attack.
JFTR, I neither bullied nor attacked you.  Your post read exactly as a spam 
- it wasn't a contribution here, it was an advertisement to go someplace 
else, to build your community over there.  It also wasn't posted by anyone 
who could even be remotely identified as a regular contributor 
here.  Coupled with your subsequent admission that you don't participate in 
unmoderated email forums, and it reads just like hit-and-run advertising.
Sorry, but them's the facts.

> This was dominate in mailing lists years ago, and is one of the reason that
> I do not participate in unmoderated lists...
Indeed, _moderated_ lists do make it difficult for spammers to abuse a 
list. It is therefore understandable why unix.com has never had a flamewar 
- not because the membership doesn't have a disagreement here and there, 
but because the administrators censor (edit, truncate, reject, whatever) 
the submitted messages and the disagreements (and spam) never reach the 
list.  I wonder whether if procmail were moderated, your advertisement 
would have actually been approved here (perhaps even because it might raise 
alarms for any would-be list moderator).  Or, if someone went to unix.com 
and posted to your procmail list for people to join the official procmail 
list to discuss procmail script writing, whether that would have been approved.
Or appreciated for that matter.

> email of antisocial bullies, even if they are the best regular expression
> gurus in the known universe...
You must be confusing me with someone else, because I make no claim to that 
title.  I have errors in my regexps now and again, just like most other 
regular contributors here, and I've got a regexp book at arms reach because 
I can't manage to commit it all to memory.  That hardly qualifies me as a guru.
In any event, please don't take your disagreement over my response to your 
advertisement out on all the other contributors here by grouping us all 
together under the "antisocial bully" category.
> This brief exchange demonstrates one of the biggest failures of mailing-list
> oriented communities.
If you've got a beef with me for posting about the hit-and-run advertising, 
don't claim it is a failure of mailing-list communities.  We're all 
affected by such abuses -- it is probably a contributing factor to why so 
many of us have anti-spam rules in the first place.
> I hope that Sean's knee-jerk attack to my entering your cyberspace was not
> representative of the overall Procmail community.
I don't speak for procmail.org (with which, JFTR, I have no affiliation), 
or for anyone other than myself.  My response was also not a knee-jerk 
attack.  If you insist on believing it was an attack, nothing I can say 
will change that, but it wasn't knee-jerk: I considered my response and 
worded it accordingly.
> On a more technical note (and to change the subject), has anyone developed
> an HTML/PHP/MYSQL interface to Procmail to users could remotely (and very
> easily) create Procmail recipes and use the power of HTML/PHP to administer
> rules?
There has been discussion of one or two such projects recently (within 6 mo 
or so) on the procmail list.  procmail.org has a link to publicly 
searchable webarchives of the list.
The official website for procmail also provides links to other procmail 
resources, so, if you're serious about your own webforums, you might 
consider asking the procmail.org webmaster if they'll include a link to a 
page at your site describing the purpose of your list.
Not that you're likely to take advice from an antisocial opensource bully 
such as myself, but might I suggest that if you do submit such a request to 
the procmail.org webmaster, that you perhaps offer a concise explanation of 
just what that forum might offer that isn't already covered by the official 
procmail list?
---
 Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

 Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
 Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.


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