On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Debayan Banerjee <[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/3/23 Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <[email protected]>: >> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Debayan Banerjee <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> Let's start with a basic question (more pertinent since you also have >> a LUG at your institution). >> >> [0] Do you believe and agree with the statement that the communication >> skills especially those pertaining to doing virtual communications >> require improvement ? > Yes.
That's a starting point. So, one of the ways to improve communication is learning how to send messages across so that the recipient can clearly and accurately understand the content - would you agree to that being a driving force of communication ? > I have still asked him to forward it to the mailing list himself. Thank you. > You ask for a list of mails from people voicing support. I went > through the ilug-cal mailing list archives. There hasnt been more than > 20 mails per month for the last 4 months. You think this is fine? > strange. No I don't think it is fine. In fact, the very fact that there is so less traffic on the list points to a couple of things: - a lot of valuable discussions are happening elsewhere and, the iLUG-Cal.org mailing list isn't the center of the universe anymore I can live with that premise. Why ? Because, whether it is agreed upon or not, the iLUG-Cal.org list wasn't the center of the universe ever. It was ad-hoc, quirky, functional and, in the earlier days driven more by the personal interests of the folks in the group than by a proper vision. - the list does not have many subscribers I don't necessarily think that is true. However, given that I have not been an Admin of any sort on the LUG infrastructure, I can live with that as well. - the LUG gates/prevents people from participating Now that is quixotic. For as long as I can recall, this is a tilt at the windmills that has been raised various times and, it has not actually amounted to much. > Among the people who have sent mails to this list include yourself, > Indranil da and Debarshi. No one else posted too many mails here. > Reason? This HTML rule. As stretched as it may sound, your line of argument actually (in the guise of accomodation) is one that encourages folks to be spoon fed. Now seriously, tell me how stupendously difficult is it to format mail in plain text using the Gmail interface off the web ? Or, do you really want to convey that the students who study at the institutions of repute are so devoid of common sense that they will not try and figure out what's wrong when their mails bounce because of a no HTML rule ? > So my point is that very few people actually respond to any mails here > and that is not because they are sleepy or dont care but because of > this rule. Or, perhaps they are having other lists and areas of interest ? >> - close to GLUG-BOM in vacuum content and stale discussion (with due >> apologies to the once-fine list) > Well its still better than a list that only has a job vacancy once in > a while and a few useful links from one single person from time to > time. Unfortunately, in this case, an empty cowshed is better than an errant calf. That is, for a list that has high noise, I am sure we'd end up seeing more discomfort. >> >> Real life isn't too different from what you do online. So, if in real >> life, you don't want to chase an issue down to earth, probably it >> isn't enough important to you. Face it. That's why we become nags on >> specific issues. > > I dont agree. And, I'd give up at this point. I've had a nice discussion with Susmit on this yesterday and perhaps, some day you will figure it out. The only pointer I'd give at this stage is to assess if you have bad days as a developer which correspond to bad days in real life. >> Unless the itch that you have is making your life a living hell, >> probably you don't have an itch at all. > > Thats taking it a little too far. We are talking about sending mails > to a list, not getting selected in the Indian cricket team. That's a close to a strawman argument as I have seen in recent times. Are you saying that you can get around issues by being casual ? > You could expect lot of things, but the fact of the matter is that > people dont read it. And what do you do if they dont? Keep expecting > or change the one single rule that has led to absolutely no discussion > on this list in the past n months. Your entire argument is based on the assumption that the no HTML rule has gated discussions. And, I've been asking a single question - if the discussions were of such importance that they needed feedback, how come the original posters did not attempt various means ? For example, do you know that orkut has an ilug-cal.org group ? I have not seen too much activity there. Now, orkut is supposed to be 'the' social networking tool for a large segment of the student population - what does low traffic there signify ? To me it signifies that in the larger scheme of things ilug-cal.org is irrelevant. Whether by design or by fate is another thread. > I under estimated myself earlier. I have more arguments infact. All I > say is mails/discussions in this list increase by a factor of 10 > if you remove this policy. So many other lists allow HTML for a > reason. I would have supported bouncing off HTML mails if this were > the kernel-devel list or some elite hacker list where people are > already into the culture from a long time participate. Clearly, this > is not such a list. One look at the archives clearly tells me that > this list has had no discussion at all in the past 4 months. I cant > see how that is good in anyway. I'd leave it to the ListAdmin from hereon. -- http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work _______________________________________________ Ilug-cal-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.ilug-cal.org/mailman/listinfo/ilug-cal-discuss
