[ADMIN] Keep those @$%#$ quotes down (was: dynamic vs. mostly static data)

[Ask Bjoern Hansen <as...@apache.org>]

On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Jerrad Pierce wrote:

> Yeah that was it....
> 
> But you could probably even use Memoize for somehting like this?
> 
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Peter Haworth [mailto:pmh-mod_perl@edison.ioppublishing.com]
> >To: Jerrad Pierce; 'Neil Conway'; ModPerl List

[Loads of useless quotes snipped]

Hey,

Sending a 3.5KB message to write two misspelled lines are a %@$%$
waste. Those 3.5KB goes to ~1500 people.

That is 5.5MB bandwidth, much via slow modems.

That is 5.5MB storage in mail spools around the world. Just to move
less than 100 bytes worth of content.

What a waste.

And even worse: if we assume each recipient spends just 10 seconds on
figuring out that this badly quoted message wasn't worth reading
before moving on, then that's more than 4 hours! Imagine how much
useful work that could have been done on mod_perl or some other tool
we all use in 4 hours.

What an awful waste.

So before you press that send button, think twice. At least.

  - Have what you are going to say been said before?

  - Did you strip any unnecessary quotes?

  - Did you check your message for typos and for readability? (not to
    discourage non-native writers of English like myself, but everyone
    should be able to do a minimum of proofreading and "layout" of
    their mail).

  - Is it really important enough to take a minimum of 4 hours of
    other people's time?

  - Are you sure?

Sending useless, badly quoted mail is a horribly waste of time and
this list is way beyond where it only matters a little. It matters a
lot here. Make yourself look better, think before posting. Help
making this list higher quality again.

If I keep seeing those badly quoted mails I'll start using a filter to
reject the worst crap so it won't get sent here. But that would be a
waste of my time, wouldn't it?


 - ask

ps. no offense to Jerrad and Peter, you were just the ones to trigger
me; I'm sure there are others who are as bad as you. Or whatever.

-- 
ask bjoern hansen - <http://www.netcetera.dk/~ask/>
more than 70M impressions per day, <http://valueclick.com>

Re: [ADMIN] Keep those @$%#$ quotes down (was: dynamic vs. mostly static data)

[Gunther Birznieks <gu...@extropia.com>]

At 03:32 PM 11/5/00 +0000, G.W. Haywood wrote:


[..snipped to avoid Ask's wrath...]

>Your outburst (with which I have to agree, although maybe we might
>talk about banner ads later:) prompted me to publish a document that
>Stas and I have been working on, if sporadically, for quite a while.
>It's available by anonymous ftp:
>
>ftp.jubileegroup.co.uk/pub/mod_perl/admin/admin.txt
>
>As it's not so new any more, some of it may be out of date already.
>Comments are invited.

Section 5.2.5 had me chuckle a bit...

"5.2.5. Sometimes you will not get a reply. Try again after a few days. 
Sometimes the replies you get will be very short. Please do not worry about 
that. People are very busy, that's all. "

I'm not sure what a user is supposed to think about this. Are you saying 
that they should shrug and think it's OK if they're question is even 
eventually not answered very well? :)

You might want to provide some guidelines about how to repost a question. 
Some things that would prompt more people to respond would be 1) including 
the fact that they posted before and got no answer. 2) rewording the 
message to include more information and 3) demonstrating your own legwork 
by also bringing up even more things that you tried without any avail.

You may also want to state what you mean by short. That is, I suspect you 
are referring to a message that is short, not a message that doesn't have 
the information necessary to solve the problem. Newbies should be educated 
that people normally post enough information to help them solve the problem 
themselves (which is the best way to solve problems anyway) than hand-holding.

Section 5.1 private mail

You actually cover this later as well but you actually give a good reason 
for not posting private mail later on. The thing about private mails is 
that sometimes someone says something that you want to mention something 
privately because you don't want to embarrass them or definitely not of use 
to the whole list. Perhaps this is just a cultural thing.

I suspect you are referring to SPAMming users on the list. If this is the 
case, then you may want to clarify this point.

Section 6.2... don't send to both the individuals on the post and the list 
at the same time.

I think in general this is true. However, I do know of cases where mailing 
lists can be a bit slow to send messages and so people do get into the 
habit of sending to both individuals and the list itself. You may want to 
mention that the modperl list is on a fairly good server that sends 
messages out in a zippy fashion (at least I think it does).

I do know that my mailing lists on sourceforge most notably takes me about 
15 minutes to get a CVS update mail. One night I was getting trickles of 
CVS update mail about 30 minutes commit after the CVS commit. Likewise, 
lists like Bugtraq usually have a 24 hour turn around for me because I have 
the stupid luck of posting after the moderator has done all his approvals 
(probably because of my timezone in Singapore). So if I need to let someone 
know something immediately before waiting for the post to appear on the 
list, I'll include the original poster.

Later,
    Gunther

Re: [ADMIN] Keep those @$%#$ quotes down (was: dynamic vs. mostly static data)

["G.W. Haywood" <ge...@www.jubileegroup.co.uk>]

Hi all,

On Sun, 5 Nov 2000, Ask Bjoern Hansen wrote:

> Sending a 3.5KB message to write two misspelled lines are a %@$%$
> waste. Those 3.5KB goes to ~1500 people.

Your outburst (with which I have to agree, although maybe we might
talk about banner ads later:) prompted me to publish a document that
Stas and I have been working on, if sporadically, for quite a while.
It's available by anonymous ftp:

ftp.jubileegroup.co.uk/pub/mod_perl/admin/admin.txt

As it's not so new any more, some of it may be out of date already.
Comments are invited.

73,
Ged.