I don't like to have to step in or manipulate the list, and so
far, I think that has worked reasonably well. The DML has done
a great job of "policing" itself. Lately though, there has been
an upswing in the number of off topic posts (I don't think anyone
would be surprised by that statement.) ;-) I just wanted to
send a message to the list to ask everyone to be careful about
what you post; before you reply to something, just stop to think
about how relevant it is, and if its off topic, perhaps it would
be better to send it directly to the person you're replying to,
or the off topic list. Granted, a lot of the stuff that I
personally would consider "acceptable" on the DML isn't specifically
Dakota stuff, but things like policies at DC, sizing up the competition,
etc. does affect us, so I have no problem with that. However,
lately, I have had a hard time seeing how many of the posts are
related at all. (Believe me I've tried!) ;-)
I do know for a fact that people are unsubscribing because of
all the off topic stuff. One person wrote to me and told me so
specifically, and lately, the "unsubscribe" notifications have become
a lot more frequent than the "subscribe" ones. I just grabbed a
list of subscribers, and there are currently about 680 DMLers
subscribed as of today, compared to about 730 a few weeks ago. I'm
sure not all of those are from people who are fed up with the shower
of off topic stuff, but I don't think I'd be going too far out on a
limb if I said that many of them are.
Anyway, this is just an appeal to everyone to try and keep it
basically on-topic on the DML. :-) You can still talk to the same
people about off-topic stuff, by doing so on the DML Off Topic
Mailing List, created by Mike Clark. For info on this mailing list,
see: http://www.cs.fredonia.edu/~stei0302/www/dakota/offtopic.html
If you don't mind reading and posting off topic stuff to the DML,
then certainly you shouldn't mind subscribing to another list?
The DML off topic list is currently very low volume, so you don't
have to worry about being flooded with mail. If two messages per day
comes through, that's a lot. Anyway, give it some thought.
Thanks very much for your consideration.
-Jon-
.--- stei0302@cs.fredonia.edu ----------------------------------------.
| Jon Steiger * AOPA, DoD, EAA, MP Race Team, NMA, SPA, USUA * RP-SEL |
| '96 Dodge Dakota V8, '96 Suzuki Intruder 1400, '96 Kolb FireFly 447 |
`--------------------------- http://www.cs.fredonia.edu/~stei0302/ ---'
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:19:07 EDT