[OT] List behavior

[Edgar D' Souza]

On 12/13/06, Pro TechWriter <pro.techwriter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Kevin wrote on OT topics and more....
>
> >
> > The problem that's recently been articulated (gosh, how often does that
> > happen) is that:
> >
> > a) there's too much Off-topic posting (likened to spam)
> >
> > b) it's not labelled.
> >
> >
> > Is this worth a Techwr-l POLL?
> >
> > Kevin
>
>
>
> Yes, I think so. Very well put too, and I agree with all that you said.
>

Me, too!

:-P

Seriously, though, I'm a member on a list which tries to enforce the
labels-in-subject-line rule, for just the reasons Kevin stated. However,
what I see is frequent failure to abide by those labelling rules, and
repeated plaintive reminders from the list owner to *please* label those
mails! And the transgressors are NOT only new members, but frequently people
who've been members for a long time.

After Eric posted the list rules yesterday, it appears that a lot of threads
in the past weeks seem to run afoul of one rule or another. Kudos to Eric
for not slapping those down, but I want to use these (in all likelihood
unintentional) transgressions of published list rules to ask one question:
how do you ensure that list members will follow that rule any better than
the others which already exist?

It's also an added overhead to iterate among the labels and select the one
appropriate for a post, then add it before posting. If members here are
subscribed to more than one list which uses the tagged-subject-line
methodology, pretty soon there will be confusion about which labels are
meant for which list, and... bang! someone on the list is offended by an
incorrectly-labelled post.

I'm not trying to shoot down labelled posts entirely; "OT" is very useful
and very welcome, but too many opaque terms like "PROCESS", "USAGE" and the
like... well, *my* little mind is already boggled! :-)

Ed.