Hi folks,
I would really like this discussion to END NOW.
Wayne - We DO have rules. that's a period
I don't feel the need to post them every two weeks. Right now, I don't even
know what you posted that got this reply, but the "Group" knows our rules.
I see below you think a -vote- on rules is in order. IT ISN'T. Don't like
the rules, okay, don't bother us.
Regards
Shelly Hurd - List Owner.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne C. Morris"
To:
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 8:51 PM
Subject: [IBC] SPAM SPAM SPAM Bonsai Japanese Miniature Trees Yashiroda
FS
In article ,
(Jim Lewis) wrote:
God. You must be a damned lawyer.
Hell, no. I just know the difference between for-sale/auction and spam.
I subscribe to a bunch of newsgroups where on-topic FS/FA posts are
welcome
and spam is not. In a few groups where FS/FA posts aren't allowed, it
says
so in the group's FAQ, which is usually posted every 1-2 weeks.
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.
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"?
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.
(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.
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.
Then people have gotten pretty lax about re-iterating it in the past year,
since nobody ever complained about the 5 bonsai-related FS/FA posts during
that time.
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!
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.
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.
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.)
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/.
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