If you are on this mailing list and have an opinion about Backup Central's use
of this list, please read this message and respond. I'm doing what I'm doing
because I believe it helps the BackupPC community -- no other reason. It sure
isn't to generate more web traffic. (If that's all I wanted to do, I could do
that by setting up a one-way setup where I import the messages from the list
and don't send forum messages back to the list.) 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 thought I'd give you a chance to respond
to that.
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, and you've never contacted me
and explained what your problem is with Backup Central doing what it's doing,
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.
BTW, no one else has complained either. In fact, of the 15 mailing lists that
I've done this with (containing a grand total of well over 15,000 subscribers
on said mailing lists and hundreds of thousands of posts), you are the ONLY one
who has made it a point to do what you're doing.
>You *cannot* edit previous posts.
Yes you can -- if you're using a different medium other than email. 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? Email is a very nice medium,
but not everyone uses it to the degree that you do. An increasing number of
people prefer to reserve email for interaction with direct coworkers and
friends, and use the web to interact with communities like this one.
>"Backup Central"s official point of view seems to be something like "we
>only encourage fools to do stupid things, we don't make them do them;
>if that annoys mailing lists, so what?". They obviously don't grasp the
>basics of threading and the involved email headers, and, frankly, I
>couldn't be bothered to explain them to them.
First, Backup Central is not a "they," it's a "me." I'm ONE GUY trying to
manage a resource for the backup community while keeping tens of thousands of
people happy and apparently not doing a good job with one of them. Second, I
DO understand the basics of email threading, and am well acquainted with the
appropriate RFCs. I'm a Unix geek through and through and used to use Usenet
before it got popular and got all messed up.
I also understand that there are a lot of users out there that don't even know
what a mailing list is, and wouldn't know how to join one if they needed to.
They wouldn't even know to look for one. But they know what forums are. It is
for those users that I did what I did.
I could have started a SEPARATE forum, but then the forum posters wouldn't gain
access to the information on the list, and the list wouldn't gain access to the
increased exposure that the forum brings. (Every list I've done this for has
increased it's participation both in terms of subscribers and in terms of
overall posts.) I didn't want to do that, so I'm using an open-source product
that connects the two.
Is mail2forum (the product I use) perfect? No. Have I written my own hacks to
the code to minimize negative impacts on mailings lists? Yes. Am I crack php
programmer would could make it do cartwheels? No. Have I done my best to
respond to those who don't like it? Absolutely. Have any of the lists where
I've done it taken a vote and asked me to leave? No.
>It's not that it is *impossible* to follow a mutilated-by-Backup-
>Central-type thread, it's just that it's a pain, and I, for one, don't
>voluntarily inflict pain upon myself. I would be happy to continue simply
>ignoring your posts and the partly incorrect or misleading answers there
>have been, if not for the fact that all of that lands in the archives and
>may mislead readers who have done *nothing* to deserve it.
Do you yell at people that use email clients that mess up the thread as well?
Just curious.
Apparently there's some combination of what I'm doing and what this poster is
doing that is driving you crazy. I _think_ it's that he's been editing
previous posts. The ability to edit a previous post is on by default, but I
have now turned it off. (In fact, I decided to do it for all forums.) See how
easy that was? I am neither stupid nor evil. Quit trying to make me so. I am
a reasonable person who responds to reasonable requests, even when they are
stated rather unreasonably strong, as is the case in your case.
In addition, the poster to which you have sent such hateful sounding posts has
posted both questions AND answers to this forum and by extension your mailing
list. (See http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/search/author/Glassfox.html )
While the majority of his/her posts have been questions, it seems that they are
trying to help as well. Maybe you could back off just a little.
Then you said:
>>Any idea what's wrong here?
>I really couldn't care less.
So you posted all that just to say that you weren't going to answer his
question? Now THAT'S being unreasonable.
W. Curtis Preston
AKA Backup Central
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