Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ncar!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!vixie From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Recommended changes to netiquette Message-ID: Date: 24 Jan 89 08:44:19 GMT References: <1084@ns.UUCP> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 50 In-reply-to: logajan@ns.UUCP's message of 23 Jan 89 20:19:52 GMT [Logajan] # 1.) It is presently recommended that answers to questions be routed via # private posts. # # The effect of this is that crummy answers by un-informed users get # posted publicly and the gems (what this whole net is about) get sent # privately. You miss the point. The recommendation in current netiquette is not "ask for private responses," it's "ask for private responses and offer to mail or post a summary if there is sufficient interest." What "sufficient interest" means here is that the folks who want to see the answer should _also_ send mail to the person asking the question, since the questioner is going to have the answer, probably very soon, and probably from many different sources. The effect is that all of the non-unique answers are later posted under a single non-drifting Subject: and further discussion, if any, begins at the point where almost every dissenting view is already known. The point of the suggestion is to reduce traffic to a _readable_ level. It has worked well; some groups previously feared lost to the dark side now have a S/N ratio high enough to make misinformed posts stand out quite sorely. # Therefore I recommend that if you know the answer, and are so motivated # to enter it, to post it as a follow-up and not as e-mail to the # questioner. And therefore I recommend that if you know an answer, you mail it to the person who asked the question, with the suggestion (unless the questioner has already stated such an intention) that they post a summary if interest warrants it. # 2.) The defenders of the Net often post BROADCAST messages of the form: # # "You are an <> for carrying on this discussion in this group. # Please move this discussion to xyzzy group. [...] Please post # follow-ups to abcdef group. (or /dev/null)" # # Well folks, this is the height of hypocrisy. You cannot broadcast such # messages and then expect the recipient to adhere to a higher standard # than you. It is insufficient to justify hypocrisy merely because it # serves our convenience! Again, you miss the point. If you only posted your suggestion in the group you think the discussion ought to move to, noone in the "wrong" group would see it. Someone who is trying to redirect a discussion to another group is _not_ breaking their own injunction -- as a libertarian, you can think of this as "retaliatory use of force", different from "first use of force". -- Paul Vixie Work: vixie@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!vixie +1 415 853 6600 Play: paul@vixie.sf.ca.us vixie!paul +1 415 864 7013