OT: OT: OT: OT: RE: What is OK to post here [ Was Re: [TriLUG] OT: windows firewall ]

[Dave Sorenson]

Respectfully wanting to have a serious discussion about this, no flaming
intended, I'd like to make the following points:

>>Er.  No one (at least that I can see in the thread) mentioned canceling
privileges.

If you re-read Joseph's post he is referring to an earlier incident where he
was contacted and that action was apparently threatened. I'm not sure if
that was on-list or off-list, but I will say that I have been lectured/
semi-chastised off list by the same individual so it would not surprise me
if that were the case.

>>3) if we'd all just been quiet about what's appropriate, the thread would
have died, and we wouldn't have had anything to get upset about.

I agree to an extent. However, if we as users do not discuss, or are not
allowed to for fear of electronic lashing in the public square, what is
appropriate and have people who believe they are the subject police, this
same friction will continue to occur over and over. The troubling thing is a
newbie may come in and be looking for help and get jumped for a mistake of
asking a newbie question and never come back to the list. IMHO as a group we
should welcome all questions and try to help one another out if we can
regardless of the topic. Telling people to go away and find answers
elsewhere doesn't help the F/OSS effort. Help them out and slyly mention
Linux F/OSS options that they may not have thought about. ;) 

Yes the list goes off topic to include cold beverages, Windows OS questions,
Solaris, picnics, etc.. What KEEPS the list off topic longer (and usually
longer than the OT thread would last anyway) are the zealots chiming in the
"This is off topic, you must stop this" replies. I will admit I'm as guilty
of responding to this as anyone else. I don't believe that people should
have to RTFM before asking for help from people who have been there already.
More than half of the posts that are ON topic aren't of interest to me so I
hit delete without complaint. The off-topic stuff is low noise IMHO and not
a distraction. In fact, I have learned a number of new things spawned from
so called Off-topic threads.

Lets discuss this further, hammer out some sort of agreement? Truce?
Understanding? And get back to the fun stuff so we don't have to wear our
nomex underpants again in a few weeks.

Dave S.

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On Behalf
Of Chris Knowles
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 11:37 AM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: RE: What is OK to post here [ Was Re: [TriLUG] OT: windows firewall
]

<<redacted for length>>