Tacos Digest, Vol 102, Issue 19

[Robert E. Seastrom]

"Bob Bruninga " <bruninga at usna.edu> writes:

>> I give up.   Why should I care?
>> If people can't figure how how to send plain text 
>> .. why the hell should I care what they send?
>> I no longer do.  Screw it.  I am not going to try 
>> to figure out what they send.
>
> Amen.  I thought I was the only one peeved by this  
>
> The Tacos list is the worst reflector of the dozens I subscribe to because the information content is near zero.  It amazes me that people think that I should follow a link based on an email that says "look at this!".
>
> And do not even take the courtesy to tell me WHY.

At the bottom of each message is the following link:
   https://amrad.org/mailman/listinfo/tacos 

You are always free to vote with your feet.

> If they are so busy that they cannot take the time to fill in a
> sentence or two about WHY they are telling me to waste my time then
> it is rude and inconsiderate to send that out to 200 people and push
> the burden onto those 200 people to take the time to figure out
> why...  This is the ultimate in SPAM.

No, it has nothing to do with unsolicited commercial email (spam).
Just because you don't like it (which may have something to do with
your mail client being configured to not display subject lines in the
summary, if i recall correctly from our previous discussion) does not
mean that it is equivalent to [fill in your favorite pejorative].

State another way, just because you feel something wastes your time by
unfairly creating work for you and annoys you does not make it "spam".
Otherwise, we could call anything "spam", from the IRS to WTOP to
MIC-E.

> SO basically, probably 98% of everything on the tacos list gets
> deleted on sight because many don't have time to follow each one to
> see why the hell someone sent it to us.

I can offer you an efficiency: a script to automatically delete 100%
of it on sight, in an automated fashion so that you needn't bother yourself.

No?  Perhaps there is a reason you remain subscribed to the list
despite your gripes?  Might it be that in the remaining 2% of the
email there is actually useful content, sufficient to warrant putting
up with the 98% that you deem useless?  If that is not the case, can
you please explain your motives?

> I am not criticizing individuals nor demanding change.  I think
> there is a core group on here that has mental telepathy to know what
> others are thinking and/or plenty of time to poke around on every
> trivially interesting link sent to them.  SO I am not complaining, I
> am just reminding them that the result is that many people just
> ignore their informationless content on sight.  ANd have no idea what
> they are sending.
>
> The best group I am subscribed to is the EVADC group (Electric
> Vehicle of DC club) and the rule of ettiquite is that ANY post of a
> link, must INCLUDE the entire quoted text of the link as well IN
> PLAIN TEXT.

evadc.org makes up for it by not maintaining their web site.  Banner
ad on the right: "WIN This Scooter (drawing June 12, 2011)".  Upcoming
events include July 20th meeting.  Clicking on the Site Map link gets
you a 404.  The remainder of the site is rife with dead links
(trivially audited with free tools).

I was looking for their mailing list AUP.  Gave up.

> Bang, you get an instant full concept of the link in milliseconds
> and the human mind can digest in an instant visualization their
> interest in reading all of it or not in a second or less.  Done.
>
> It it looks interesting, then they can follow the link and get all
> the graphics and full content of the original.
>
> If one just sends "look at this" links, he is first warned, then
> eventually moderated.

Why not set up a ham radio technology mail reflector with these exact
rules?  Yahoo Groups is free.  Your only investment is your time,
being the moderator.  I'm sure you'll make a splendid one!

-r