* Russell Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [010512 20:57]:
> Chris Garrigues writes:
>> As it is, I consider unsubscribing several times a week (and it's
>> not because of the newbies).
> I send qmail list traffic into its own mailbox, and read it once a
> day. It's kind of handy, because I can see the questions which don't
> get answered, and sometimes I answer them if I feel so led.
There are several ways of dealing with high volume lists (which in the
Microsoft Outlook (Express) age equals "high amount of lusers messing with
stuff they should never be exposed to"). I've been getting between 500 and
2500 messages (mail and news) per day for years, and I've found that there
is only one tool that does the job effectively: Gnus http://gnus.org/.·
Why?
====
There are several problems with high volume lists. In no particular
order:
· lusers not reading the minimum amount of documentation;
· broken software (why did you not cut the "(was:" (which should have been
"(Was:" in the first place) from your quote?). Examples:
- removing References: headers in order to, well, what? break threads
(a concept alien to the morons in Redmond, but extremely useful - if
you have a good newsreader, you know what I'm talking about);
- encouraging *wrong* behaviour like "message on top, full quote
below" (eh, bandwidth is unlimited, right?), excessive signatures
(yes, 4 lines *is* enough, no, I will *never* ring you up or visit
you) without sigdashes (yes, that's ^-- $, and yes, it *does* make
sense, because various tools can cut your sig from replies or
(even better) make it invisible if it sucks), sending HTML (what
is this - the web?) or VCards (as I said, I will *not* phone or
visit you, and no, I'm not interested in your birthday, favourite
sexual deviation or daughter's name either (if she's willing and
blonde, you can send me some bikini shots, though);
· off topic threads (like this one);
· idiots and trolls (usually mutually interchangable, but stupid trolls
are even more annoying (greetings to Michael T. Babcock while we're
at it (remember kids: no lame flame without at least one ad hominem
attack)));
· dupes (like, I am on this list and only a complete retard would send
me a Cc: (which makes approx. 31 retards per month which, in return,
makes me wonder when the prices for anti-personnel ammo will finally
drop)).
Solutions:
==========
· Encourage people who are obviously lost to adapt a behaviour fitting
for a technical environment: tell them to read and follow
http://learn.to/edit_messgages/ and the links therein;
· Tell them why using Outlook and similar "programs" is not only bad
for themselves but also destroys threads, which means archives, which
means shared knowledge databases;
· Use software that lives up to the challenge of a Microsoft-luser
infested environment: Gnus.
- Gnus introduces the concept of adaptive scoring. Killfiles are for
lusers, real men score: each article is assigned a value for "From:,
Subject:, References:, quote/text ratio, etc. and the summary for
the group the article is filtered into is sorted according to these
values: Gods first, lusers last.
- Gnus automagically de-moronizes messages (while reading and in
replies):
* convert RE: AW: SE: to Re:;
* cut (Was:);
* wrap long lines;
* nuke HTML, VCards etc.;
* remove spurious blank lines;
* ...
- Gnus works with IMAP (including mail splitting) and Maildir (courtesy
of Paul Jarc's nnmaildir.el - *great* work!). Ummm... are we on topic,
yet? Good.
- Gnus lets you merge mailing lists into thematically similar groups.
- Gnus lets you read mail like news (including expiry).
Possible additional weapons include procmail[1] and the BBDB (for
marking posters known to you).
Anyway, I sometimes wonder what makes people think they deserve help
if they don't invest a minimum amount of time and diligence into
writing their mails to technical mailing lists. The qmail list is a
particularly sad example with a group of *extremely* competent and
helpful (I've /never/ had to wait for more than 6h for an answer to
my problems (*all* of which were solved)) people being swamped by a
tidal wave of morons asking FAQs, not knowing their way around the
Internet or using orthography and grammar in a way that indicates a
grasp of the English language that will effectively bar them from a
deeper understanding of qmail, anyway.
Yes, people like me who are fairly new to qmail and had rather have these
people answer meaningful (i.e. "I can learn something from this" rather than
"wow, those are either extremely nice or masochistic people") questions get
very frustrated over this.
But it's much easier to whine and groan, Chris, instead of taking some
action, isn't it? After all, your post was brought to us via softmail
written by the same k3wl D00d3 who invented the Internet (no, not Al
"Treehugger" Gore, but the Great Chairman Gill Bates himself), so it
*has* to be okay, eh? Not.
Footnotes:
[1] The following recipe nukes all mail with a text/quote ratio of 1:2
and more (weighted scoring *rules*):
:0 Bh
* 20^1 ^>
* -10^1 ^[^>]
/dev/null
--
Robin S. Socha <http://my.gnus.org/users/robin/>
http://my.gnus.org/ - To boldly frobnicate what no newbie has grokked before.
