[chbot] Mailing list operation was: Test message.

[Volker Kuhlmann]

On Tue 18 Nov 2014 07:42:45 NZDT +1300, Richard Jones wrote:

> Are you arguing against test driven development?

Mailing list membership is not development.
"Test-driven" implies probing unknown territory, doing it for areas you
can just read up in the manual leaves the approach looking not so smart.

> Or re-observing that hindsight is an exact science?

No. It is knowledge accumulated in 20+ years of active mailing list
membership, and I'm happy to share. I'm a bit annoyed it has got lost,
it is the age of SMS (attention span limit: 160 characters) and
Faceplant(TM) (just click-me, no knowledge required, and the advertising
and surveillance industries love the ignorant).

>   Maybe it is time to formulate some rules / guidelines regarding posts to
> our email reflector?

I personally wouldn't think that to be worthwhile. Many mailing lists do
have one but they all tend to be very similar, and often
self-explanatory. Just link to a few :-) They all say "no test messages
to test your own email" though. Questions are encouraged, asking before
RTFM just because it's lazier is not.

> I'm quite happy to receive and respond to the odd test
> message if someone has a problem.

Asking about problems is what the lists are for. My point was that test
messages are never necessary, and I used it as an opportunity to point
out "how things work".

Mark, nice link, but on the Internet you can always find someone
supporting your position. That person doesn't look old enough to have
grown up with it. And it's called "mailman" the "mailing list manager"
(read the footer again) because it's a reflector, right? A mirror would
be a reflector, a mailing list manager would perhaps be a
duplicator/auto-forwarder. It would be a reflector if you got your own
posting back, which, as noted, isn't default setting.

Now I'll go back to project work... ;-)

Volker

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann
http://volker.top.geek.nz/	Please do not CC list postings to me.