Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: A plea for restraint
Message-ID: <10338@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 29 May 89 23:13:41 GMT
References: <11601@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <14354@bfmny0.UUCP> <712@marob.masa.com>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 18

In article <712@marob.masa.com> daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes:
>I have always felt that unsolicited C-related mail directly to Chris,
>or Doug, or Henry was side-stepping the net, and, in a small way perhaps,
>an invasion of their privacy.
>If these folks were overloaded with personal e-mail regarding C, they might
>feel less inclined to council as thoroughly in c.l.c.

I can't speak for the others, but the main reason I post responses to C
questions is to spread information to as many C programmers as possible.
Obviously, private e-mail does not accomplish that.  Since my employer
doesn't think I'm being paid to help programmers at large, reducing the
leverage of the effort I put into these notes is not a viable option; I
can't justify answering a flood of novice questions via private e-mail.

I don't know what can be done about the low S/N ratio in this newsgroup.
It's one of the few Usenet newgroups I still read, as others long ago
became intolerably noisy.  Changing the newgroup to be moderated might
help, at the cost of increased delays between posting and reading.