-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [Speaking only for myself]
On Wednesday 09 Jan 2008, Priya Kumar wrote: > Dont you people realize you are being total hippocrites ? > > At one end, you kick out a lurker who wants to reach out and contact > one-to-one with the group-- for sending a single off-topic message. > > At the other end, you yourselves create traffic of 5-10 messages-- > for nothing ? > > Personally I want to ask-- if connecting with like-minded people > through social networking sites is so bad, how come Barack Obama has > a website and a myspace page ? > > Instead of revelling in such total groupism-- cursing the darkness- > and then looking for people to kick out-- you people should ask > yourself if there's a way to be more helpful to people who would > otherwise be discouraged-- like the guy in a US university-- who > wanted to take classes in Delhi-- but who was totally discouraged by > the individual who in trying to show off his wit and intelligence > insisted on foisting himself upon him. > > [personal stuff snipped] Priya, I believe you're looking at the function and the functioning of this list in a slightly different way from what most people perceive it to be. To elaborate, this list is meant to discuss Linux, FOSS and related issues. This includes technical issues, but the list also serves as a vehicle for discussing larger social issues. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), the list is also used to find like-minded people and organise face to face meetings, etc. On the other hand, no matter how tempting the social and meeting opportunities may be, they must not be allowed to subsume the primary function of the list (Linux, free software and related technologies). Unfortunately, mass invites from (may I use the term?) idiots who think nothing of giving their whole address book to a social networking site are getting more common every day, and we've already been spammed by various sites, inviting us to join in and participate in the fun. Similarly, no matter how important it may be for the world to condemn (say for the sake of argument) the Vadodra riots, the discussion of that has no place on this mailing list. Which is not to say it must not be discussed (or social networking sites must be deprecated), just use an appropriate vehicle for the discussion. I have nothing against social networking sites (well, I do, but that's neither here nor there), but you would appreciate that there's a difference between sending a PERSONAL invite to your friend inviting him/her to join the site and a RANDOM invite to thousands of people whom you've never met, and many of whom you're likely to never meet (because, e.g. they live 7000 KM away from you). The former is quite acceptable; the latter completely unacceptable. Further, long-term users of the Internet have an ingrained reaction to spam (unsolicited bulk mail), and the reaction is usually along the lines of: Kill the spammer before s/he can send another mail to my inbox. I personally spend about 1/3 my working day reading and responding to e-mail. If I have to spend even an hour a day handling spam, that means I lose 12.5% of my potentially productive time. Given that, are you surprised if I (and people like me) try to ridicule, belittle and insult spammers? Given the choice between getting more work done and making more money, and being nice to (or even tolerating) spammers, guess which one I'd choose? Combine the above two, and you would start to get an understanding of why the list explodes whenever someone commits the two cardinal sins: (a) giving his/her personal details and addressbooks to a commercial site and (b) helping a site spam a mailing list. The first harms the user directly and all users of the Internet indirectly. The second harms all of us who use e-mail as a tool for fun as well as business. Perhaps the reactions are extreme, but at least they're understandable. And the motives that you attribute to people aren't the real motives at all. P.S. Who's Barak Obama, and why should his Internet habits have any impact on my world view? Regards, - -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ Freedom in Technology & Software || February 2008 || http://freed.in/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHhHpSyWjQ78xo0X8RAn+7AJ9wJeEY4bkdcKojI8ncAXBX2jdmDQCdFGYP OpBf1WdiWYmGic7tcmujLRQ= =MugB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - February 22/23, 2008 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
