How to handle OT & spam on a mail list

[Joshua Zeidner]

On 27 Mar 2008 21:50:58 -0700, Dennis Kibbe <dennisk at member.fsf.org> wrote:
> Mail clients, like Evolution & T'bird are not designed to handle mail lists where you receive a large volume of mail that can clog your inbox and which is often off topic.

  Dennis,  Herein lies the problem- the sematics of 'off topic'.  'Off
topic' has an entirely subjective use.  For those who subscribe to
this list to trade System Administration tips, this thread is *Off
Topic*.

>
>  One way to get around this problem is to read the list with a newsreader like pan or gnus (Emacs). You can do this at www.gmane.org by subscribing to gmane.org.user-groups.linux.phoenix.

  There are lots of tools available for mitigating the problems you,
and many others before you, have identified.  Blogging, Digg, Social
Networking and many more are established methods of managing the
problem of signal-to-noise ratios on internet based communications
media.  While I am not really that familiar with gmane, it is hardly
the dominant solution for this class of problems.

   What confuses the hell out of me is why have all this legal
overhead when these usage scenarios can be enforced with technology
rather than stipulating acceptable behavior guidelines such as you
have just done.  I mean, this is a group for computer programmers
right?

  "NO TOP POSTING!!!!!"

  Best,

   Joshua Zeidner

   - http://www.joshuazeidner.com/



>
>  A news reader will let you easily "score" articles so those that you want to read rise to the top and those you don't want to read will either sink to the bottom or not show up at all. Articles also "expire" so that your news inbox is self-emptying. Your normal mail inbox is reserved for, well, mail.
>
>  You still need to subscribe to the actual list via the PLUG site if you want to post, but you can elect to receive the digest rather than individual posts and then put yourself on "vacation hold" so even that doesn't show up.
>
>  If you need to contact the administrator of the list that is best done thought the appropriate email address rather than posting to the list. Requests to unsubscribe and other purely admin matters are handled through this email address which is different than the one used to post or the mailman page and not by posting to the list proper.
>
>  Dennisk
>  --
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