administrivia: offtopicness

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

i appreciate the various comments on off topic postings that have been
made. i'd like to comment on the comments, and remind members of the list
of a few things they need to consider.

1) this list has ca. 1700 members. it is unlikely that we will hear from
all 1700 members on this subject, or even from a statistically valid sample
of 1700 members (it's actually impossible, as a valid sample must be
randomly selected, not self-selected.)

2) while i do solicit opinions from time to time, this list is not a
democracy. never has been. think of me as a lazy, benevolent dictator.

3) i've been in the mailing list business one way or another for 15-16
years, as near as i can tell. i have seen numerous lists rendered useless
by excess offtopic posting. i have also seen communities hurt by overly
harsh control over offtopic posting. i try to strike a medium.

4) the offtopic list was created for the very purpose of allowing folks to
talk with their friends about whatever they want. what i'd like to see is a
self-policing environment where folks post once or twice, and then you'll
see a posting which starts or ends with "i think we'd better move this over
to offtopic." that way i won't have to periodically issue warnings; stuff
will move when it's obvious people want to talk more about it.

to achieve 4, folks actually need to join offtopic. as i've posted
instructions recently, i'll not repeat myself here.

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@domain.elided
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
              Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
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