Re: [tlug] Okay, sorry. It was a font issue...

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "David" == David Oftedal <david@example.com> writes:

    David> Haha! I feel for you, I really do. Perhaps you and I should
    David> go off an create an ILUG (Immoral LUG)?

I think you'll find that people at nomikais and tech meetings behave
much more in line with your expectations.  It's not the LUG part, it's
the mailing list you should fork.  But don't expect it to collect very
many expert members, or result in a flourishing interchange of
technical information.

There are _practical_ reasons for the rules of netiquette, in its
several flavors.  In many cases, the particular rule is somewhat
arbitrary, but there are big technical differences between email and
voice, and email and snailmail.  These differences _physically_
require that expressions of courtesy be made somewhat differently.
(Eg, the practice of smiley marking.)

There are also differences in functionality.  In a given work[1] day,
I occasionally process up to a couple _thousand_ email messages,
attachments, and/or linked web pages, while 250-500 is typical, and
produce a score or more (not including automatically generated ones
like patch contributions).  To maintain that kind of flow requires
certain regularities in inputs and outputs, and netiquette provides
standards that have been proven to enhance cooperation in this
environment.

Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people have adapted to it.
You don't have to, but if you don't, the odds that those of us who
have will respond to you in any useful way will drop dramatically.  As
rick@example.com puts it (more or less):  people who are being rude
are actually being nicer than most.  The rest, who could tell you what
you want to know, are instead quietly putting your mail address in
their killfiles so that they'll never see a post from you again.  Thus
reducing the noise level in a way which is highly unlikely to ever
cost them a thing.

There are net-places where standards of courtesy are more in line with
day-to-day life.  But they tend to be places where expertise is not
particularly valued, or, conversely, where the expertise is quite
specialized (lots of app dev projects have pleasant MLs/IRC channels,
etc).  Places where various busy people from various backgrounds with
various interests gather tend to work better by netiquette rules in my
experience.  TLUG is one of those.


Footnotes: 
[1]  Actually, "hobby day."  My colleagues at work rarely produce more
than about 20 messages/day between them, and most of that has all the
content of a typical Viagra spam.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.