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
4FBA0941CF3D9347889AA5FF23A809BE017B39B9 AT ghmail02.glasshousetech DOT 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 went to the trouble of correcting his
message and 80% of the people answer just as if he hadn't?
> 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.
A good point. I'm not saying forums don't have their place, just that forums
don't map well to mailing lists in all aspects.
> >"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.
Point taken. It does not say so in the "sent via Backup Central" footer though,
does it? :)
> Second, I DO understand the basics of email threading, and am well
> acquainted with the appropriate RFCs.
RFC 1855: "Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line with
a carriage return."
Yes, I know, I'm also in violation of RFC 1855 in several aspects.
> I'm a Unix geek through and through and used to use Usenet before it got
> popular and got all messed up.
I couldn't agree more.
> 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.
Then you should be the first person to appreciate that exactly *these* users
need to be informed of what to watch out for when using this special kind of
"forum" (from the top of my outbox, without the assumption of being complete):
* Don't edit message you have posted. You can't edit mails you have sent.
* You may or may not get an e-mail copy of replies to your posts. Don't be
surprised if you do or disappointed if you don't.
* Don't assume people you are expecting an answer from have the complete
history of an ancient (or even recent) thread available like you do. Quote
what is relevant (and only that).
* There is no concept of an "immediately preceeding post" on a mailing list,
even if it looks like that in the forum. Make clear which message you are
responding to. Use the correct "reply" button.
* Look for attachments in the original mailing list archive on sourceforge,
as the forum apparently drops them.
Why not educate these users on the topic of mailing lists?
> I could have started a SEPARATE forum, but [...]
Agreed. With the "but" part, that is.
> Is mail2forum (the product I use) perfect? No.
Agreed :-).
> >It's not that it is *impossible* to follow a mutilated-by-Backup-
> >Central-type thread, [...]
>
> Do you yell at people that use email clients that mess up the thread as
> well? Just curious.
Good idea, actually :). But seriously, threading seems to be getting *worse*
over time. A recent example (and I'm sorry, I know ASCII art doesn't carry
well to MUAs with proportional fonts):
5473 Dec 18 Glassfox ( 23) [BackupPC-users] Permission denied durin
5474 Dec 18 Johan Ehnberg ( 58) |->Re: [BackupPC-users] Permission denied
5475 Dec 18 Carl Wilhelm So ( 32) |->Re: [BackupPC-users] Permission denied
5476 Dec 19 Glassfox ( 37) |->[BackupPC-users] Permission denied du
5477 Dec 19 Johan Ehnberg ( 42) | |->Re: [BackupPC-users] Permission deni
5478 r Dec 20 Adam Goryachev ( 63) | |->
5479 r Dec 19 Johan Ehnberg ( 78) | |->
5480 Dec 20 Holger Parplies ( 82) | |->
757 Dec 20 Adam Goryachev ( 113) | |->
758 Dec 20 Johan Ehnberg ( 86) | | |->
759 Dec 21 Adam Goryachev ( 40) | | |->
5481 Dec 21 Jeffrey J. Koso ( 20) | |->
5482 Dec 19 Pedro M. S. Oli ( 128) |->Re: [BackupPC-users] Permission denied
5483 Dec 19 Pedro M. S. Oli ( 129) | |*>
5484 Dec 19 Glassfox ( 37) |->[BackupPC-users] Permission denied du
5485 Dec 20 Nils Breunese ( ( 21) | |->Re: [BackupPC-users] Permission deni
5486 Dec 20 anandiwp@gmail. ( 19) | |*>
5487 Dec 20 Glassfox ( 38) |->
5488 Dec 20 Glassfox ( 33) |->
5489 Dec 20 Glassfox ( 38) |->
If you look into the emails, you'll find that [5476] is actually a reply to
[5475], [5484] to [5477], [5487] to [5485], [5488] to [5486] and [5489] to
[5488]. In a forum, this makes no difference, because it's all just a flat
array of messages (ordered by time), but if you try to read this thread all at
once, you'll see answers before questions. Similarly, on mailing lists you'll
see independent subthreads which are probably confusing on a forum board,
because you end up with interwoven unrelated discussions.
I now realize that the problem at hand is probably that Glassfox used a generic
"reply" button instead of a "reply to *this* message" - but then, how should
he know that it makes a difference? Why *is* there a generic "reply" button
when you need to reply to a specific post? Yes, mail2forum and PHP. I
understand, but it doesn't make me happy.
> Apparently there's some combination of what I'm doing and what this poster
> is doing that is driving you crazy.
Well, as I'm trying to point out, the forum makes things possible that make no
sense on a mailing list, and users happily use them. When you've pointed it
out several times to different users, you get just as annoyed and tired of
doing it, as if you had repeatedly explained it to the same user, even though
you realize that you haven't.
> 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.
Thank you, I honestly appreciate that.
> (In fact, I decided to do it for all forums.)
You wouldn't have done that if you didn't agree with me :).
> See how easy that was? I am neither stupid nor evil. Quit trying to make
> me so.
I wasn't trying to make you so. I believed you already were ;-).
> 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.
Admitted.
> [...]
> 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.
Really? I believe it *is* worth pointing out that the reason for not getting
an answer might be that you have annoyed people. I *could* just ignore the
matter, but that wouldn't change anything, would it?
As for the question, I'll get back to that in the original thread, even though
the first answer that springs to mind is "not really".
Sorry about the trouble and the long off-topic post, list. I *would* be
interested in how others feel about the matter though.
Regards,
Holger
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