Hi,
cpreston wrote on 2008-12-23 17:25:58 -0500 [[BackupPC-users] missing rdev on
device...]:
[...] I'm doing what I'm doing because I believe it helps the BackupPC
community -- no other reason. [...] I believe that what I'm doing is the
right thing, but at least one member of the list seems to feel rather
strongly in the opposite direction.
I don't doubt that your intentions are good. I see some problems which I
suspect other *mailing list* users also have.
Holger said to another poster on a different thread:
Since you're ignoring off-list requests to stop posting to this *mailing
list* via Backup Central, let me explain to you on-list, that this is a
MAILING LIST (shouting intended), and that you are making an utter
fool of yourself...
So let me get this straight. I've never met you,
Correct.
and you've never contacted me and explained what your problem is with
Backup Central doing what it's doing,
Partly correct. I've made several points on-list, supposing someone from
Backup Central (which turns out to mean you) would read them (which
probably did not happen), and one admittedly vague hint off-list,
to which you responded
[2008-12-11 10:58:48 -0500
4fba0941cf3d9347889aa5ff23a809be017b3...@ghmail02.glasshousetech.com]:
Backupcentral maintains the subject heading, so I'm not sure why you
wouldn't be able to follow the thread. As to this one, the poster fat
fingered his response, the same as can happen on a mailing list.
This did not encourage me to expect technical expertise or much
open-mindedness towards reasonable requests.
Let me explain how the situation appears from my point-of-view:
backuppc-users is the upstream users mailing list, the primary resource
for contacting the developer(s) and the user base of BackupPC. You have
decided to make the list available to web users - a fine goal per se. I
would expect that anyone can do this without special permission. I would
also expect this to be done in a non-intrusive fashion. I believe you are
trying to do it in a non-intrusive fashion. But your implementation has
flaws which are becoming increasingly annoying for me as user of the mailing
list. The nature of the flaws makes me believe that it must annoy other users
of the mailing list, too, though I have not asked so far (because it is
off-topic). I do not believe you introduced yourself to me (though you may
have to the list before I joined), so I don't know much about who you are,
what your interest in this list is, how to contact you, what reaction to
expect and so on. I don't really *want* to know any of this either. I don't
*want* to search your web site. That's not what I'm here for. Up to a certain
point, I'll ignore what is annoying me. I'll try to stop the effect by
recommending to people not to post through Backup Central but to join the
mailing list instead. I'll get tired of doing it, because I have to tell every
new poster. I'll stop doing it on-list, because it's not very interesting for
the list (and other new posters won't see it anyway). So,
but you've taken it upon yourself to wage an off-list email campaign to
tell anyone that posts on Backup Central that they should not do so.
that does not explain my attitude very well.
BTW, no one else has complained either.
I have read several other requests on-list that a new poster should join the
mailing list instead of posting via Backup Central.
You *cannot* edit previous posts.
Yes you can -- if you're using a different medium other than email.
My point exactly. If you are posting to backuppc-users, you are *not* using
a different medium, even though Backup Central may make it appear so.
And, if you CAN edit a previous post to correct a misunderstanding in your
question, why shouldn't you? What is so evil about that?
Apparently, I don't need to convince you, because you already understand the
problem. Just the same: your emulation (or that of mail2forum) of editing a
mailing list email produces an almost identical copy. On the list, we generally
read the first version before the second, because they are sorted by date.
What's more, the edited version appears to miss reasonable threading headers,
so it may appear outside the thread. If you've read the first version, how much
time are you inclined to spend re-reading the complete message to find some
subtle difference, which may well turn out to be cosmetic (spelling correction,
quotation-markup correction or similar - in this case, in fact, the addition
of a , use rsync, which was apparent from the quoted error message)? It's
not as though the edited version would make it easily possible to ignore the
*first* version. Or that we were desperately in need of solving other people's
problems, even if it means going too far out of our way. I routinely ignore
edited version completely, because the change is unlikely to be important
enough (for me) to warrant the trouble involved in spotting it. Now, how does
it make your forum user feel if he
