On Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 06:28:07PM +0200, Benny Kleykens wrote: > lacking this skill. Obviously few of you would give a rats-ass but Im > truly considering unsubscribing from this list, this is the second > lenghty flame-war in less than a month... maybe a moderator is needed to > keep this mailing-list pleasent and truly informative ?
I think this might suggest a more moderate (and less moderated) way out of the woods. I wrote it at a time when another mailing list was having one of those flurries of "unsubscribe sent to list address" things, but it's really a general guideline for dealing with any untopical message: 1) DO NOT RESPOND TO THESE ON-LIST. 2) An informative e-mail, probably a canned response, should be sent privately. Ideally we could have a perfect filter that does this and sends exactly one such response, but duplicates aren't a problem as long as you SEE RULE #1. 3) Please apply RULE #1 when replying to those who did not themselves follow RULE #1. 4) Don't forget RULE #1, please! Of course, this requires a general interest in maintaining the list as a friendly and useful place for information exchange. IMO&E, if we haven't got that, then nothing will save us; if we do, then the overhead of moderation is purely wasted effort. -- Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law. - Justice John Paul Stevens, from his dissenting opinion Dec 12, 2000