Getting it right

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >   for the love of god, karl, could you please at least invest the
> > effort to come up with some meaningful subject lines other than "my
> > computer" or "getting it right" or "here's something else that will
> > interest absolutely no one but me."
> >
> >   do you think you can do that?
> >
> > rday
> >
> Are you kidding? Let him keep using meaningless subjects. That way,
> it is less likely that some unsuspecting newbie will stumble across
> one of his threads, and try to use the advice Karl provides.
> Otherwise someone might have to create an auto-reply for his
> messages that posts warning:

heh ... good point.  on a slightly more serious note, and addressed to
you newbies who *aren't* as irredeemably dense as karl larsen, let me
make a suggestion -- when you're posting, take the time to come up
with a meaningful and informative subject line that will make it more
likely that someone else will actually want to read your post.  you
know ... the kind of advice that's recommended to you, say, here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines#head-3d485a4519fec57eb9df70deecc37022d201f7d5

it's not just courtesy, but it may make a serious difference in
whether you get help as, personally, i have for the most part simply
given up on even *reading* posts that don't have a meaningful subject.
i'm on several mailing lists and i get hundreds of e-mails a day, and
i've decided that, if someone is too lazy to come up with a decent
subject line, they're not worth my time, so anything with a subject of
say, "need help badly!" or "urgent!  my system is broken!" ... well,
those messages get deleted unread.

this has been a public service announcement.  you may now go back to
getting it right.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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