List Management - RESPONSE

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire_at_neurotica.com>
Date: Sat Mar 16 10:22:28 2002

  I feel the need to chime in with some support for Jay. This is a
high-traffic list with a lot of recipients, which surely takes a
nontrivial amount of bandwidth and system resources to host...people
shouldn't lose sight of that fact. I run a couple of fairly large
mailing lists myself; something like this isn't a "set it and forget
it" thing...Spam is the least of the problems, most of the time.
People with crappy network connections whose mail gets backed up and
queued, Windows programs that screw up everything in sight when moving
mail around, twenty-line messages turning into 50Kbytes due to rampant
Microsoft HTMLization bogging down the mail server, etc etc etc. It's
a pain in the ass, and it takes a certain amount of babysitting to
keep things running smoothly.

  Jay does a fine job. He may not have started this list, but he runs
it now...and that counts for a lot.

  I hate spam as much as anyone. Actually, I hate spam a lot MORE than
most for various reasons. But guess what...My mailer has a "delete"
function, and I actually know how to use it! Wow, what a concept.

  I know, I know..."but spam slows down my net connection!" If your net
connection sucks so badly that a little (or a lot) of spam bogs it
down, then get something faster. There's no real excuse in this day
and age. Spam blows dog, there's no question about it...but it's a
fact of life on the internet today. Everyone should fight it whenever
and wherever they can, but you WILL get spam if you have an email
address. The sooner people learn to deal with that, the happier
everyone will be.

  Further...there are lots of off-topic conversations on this mailing
list. I take part in many of them, so I'm as guilty as anyone. But
you know what? Humans are social animals, and this list is a social
thing. Many of you are my friends. If there's an off-topic
discussion here that you don't want to take part in, well, use that
magical "delete" key...Every mailer has one.

  In other words...if anyone here has a life that's so utterly perfect
that spam and off-topic discussions can offset the friendship,
comeradery, education, and other classiccmp benefits, I'll swap lives
with you any day of the week.

  Sheesh.

        -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire                    "Watch those lateral G's man,
St. Petersburg, FL               I've got sandwiches in my lap!" -Sridhar
Received on Sat Mar 16 2002 - 10:22:28 GMT

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