Wayne C. Morris wrote:
In article ,
(Jim Lewis) wrote:

snip


you are one of those really, really nice guys who bollix up
their return address so one one can reply privately to you
-- which I would have much preferred to do.


I "bollix up my return address" precisely because I don't want private
replies. If someone wants to send me a message that isn't appropriate
subject matter for the newsgroup, I'm not interested in reading it.


EXACTLY what I meant. And if you hadn't done that, all this
crap wouldn't have to end up in our archives -- which cost
us money.



The IBC (list and news group) (and I as a member) pre-date
E-bay by 10 years or more. Ever since E-bay cranked up we
have had Non-regulars "drop by" to post news of the
wunnerful "stuff" they have for sale, and we have at _every_
instance responded with a notice that this is not appropriate.


"Every instance"?

Surely, if _I_ saw them.


The last time anyone here objected to an FS/FA post was a year ago. Since
then, there have been 5 more bonsai-related for-sale posts (not counting
this latest one), none of which garnered any complaints or objections --
not publicly, anyway. Anybody who had been reading the newsgroup for those
11.5 months would have concluded that bonsai-related FS/FA posts are rare
but acceptable here.

You _count_ these things? My, my.



(I didn't count the real spam. Spam isn't welcome anywhere, but spammers
don't give a damn about rules, and they never stick around long enough to
read *any* messages, much less the complaints about their own posts.)

There have been a few lengthy threads here discussing the spam problem,
during brief peaks in the amount of spam. But at no point in those threads
did anyone ever say bonsai-related FS/FA posts are inappropriate.


Probably because none of the spam was "bonsai related." As
I believe I said, we may allow one-time posts by regular
members who have excess "stuff" to get rid of. 99.999% of
the time, they have the courtesy to ask me or Shelly (or
even the list itself) BEFORE they post. Most of the time
we'd say OK -- once.

This person was not a regular. She was, I suspect, the
owner of a bookstore (ONE book listed, and NOT a book that a
dabbler would have picked up to get started in bonsai --
though it is a good book) who happened to find a bonsai book
in her possession. I have had -- and discouraged -- many
requests from dealers.



We have iterated and re-iterated here that we will NOT open
the floodgates to every jerk and yahoo who happens to have a
plant, a pot, (or a book) for sale on any one of the auction
sites.



As for "opening the floodgates", I think you're greatly overestimating the
potential bonsai-related FS/FA traffic. I'm a longtime regular In another
group with 4 times the traffic of this one, and which encourages on-topic
FS/FA posts, but that group gets an average of less than 2 such posts per
day -- hardly what I'd call a flood!

Scarcely relevant, but . . .




If you insist that the welcome message be changed


Only if you insist on enforcing a "no bonsai-related for-sale/auction
posts" rule. If you want people to obey a set of rules, it's up to you to
ensure that newcomers can read those rules. Waiting until they've broken a
rule before telling them about it is a waste of everyone's time.

Good point.


Futhermore, if you ever want to complain to an ISP about one of their users
breaking the rules, you'll need to be able to show that the group *does*
have rules, and not just "guidelines". I've seen one case where a
newsgroup's rules were posted only in something titled "Unofficial FAQ", so
an ISP concluded that their user hadn't broken any *official* rules.

It's not that important to natter to an ISP on this kind of
issue. MOST people like this one stop when asked. Real
spammers don't (and usually bollix up THEIR addresses, too,
so it's not worth backtracking.


If you do write up a set of rules for the newsgroup & mailing list, I think
it ought to be presented for discussion & voting, just in case the current
subscribers don't agree with whatever the consensus was years ago. (The
owners of the mailing list can impose any rules they like on the list, but
an unmoderated newsgroup cannot be controlled by any one person, not even
the person who created it.)

Well, in a way, we can since RAB gets the mailing list posts
SOLELY because we decided that would be a good thing to do.


It'd also be nice to incorporate the rules into a properly formatted FAQ,
and cross-posted to rec.answers and news.answers so that it'd be available
on all the FAQ archive web sites like www.faq.org. Details on how to do
it, including ways to have it auto-posted regularly, can be found at
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/news-answers/guidelines/.


Not worth it. Usenet and mailing lists' days are numbered
-- much as I dislike the thought.

Jim Lewis - - Who has said what he has
to say on this.

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