List Rules

[Jeff Kinz]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 01:23:25PM -0700, Craig White wrote:
> 1 - This is Red Hat server and they make the rules. They have
> deliberately chosen to keep the rules to a minimum. They are going to
> let pretty much everything slide that isn't entirely disrupted to the
> commerce of the list.

True - RedHat has the approach of mostly letting the communities that
form around each mailing list be self governing.  In this sense, each
community gets to decide what standards/practices it needs to follow.

> 2 - You are confusing convention with etiquette and then rfc standards -
> they are clearly not the same thing at all.

False - See RFC 1855  which covers Netiquette Guidelines

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html

Pay special attention to section 3 "One-to-Many Communication"
which covers how to use mailing lists, and which, coincidentally, the 
recently posted "list rules" are largely a copy of.

> Generally, when someone isn't getting it, I tend to point them to:
> <http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

An Excellent document which says, by the way - the way to point it out
to them is to do so in public.

Quote from the RedHat Install List Guidelines quoting ESR:
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This is a quote from Eric Raymond and Rick Moen's paper on "How to ask
for help the smart way":

"Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by
people actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that all
criticism should have been conveyed via private mail: That's not how it
works. Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally insulted when
someone comments that one of your claims was wrong, or that his views
differ. Those are loser attitudes."

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-- 
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.