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<p>Once again, I am far more pragmatic. I can't enforce my will on others to do what they do or don't want to do, no matter how well reasoned or logical my argument may be. I have to accept that once in a while somebody might want to test that they can still receive email from the list. I can ask them not to do so, but it isn't worth fighting to the death (of either them or the quality of the emails in the list).</p>
<p>I am however in control of things my own little universe. Here is my resolution to the problem of test emails:</p>
<p><span>1. I consider if the amount of drivel I end up wasting time reading is enough to make me blacklist any of the senders as them being a person I just don't want to hear from again, as they never add anything of value without it being wrapped up in a ton of crap.</span></p>
<p><span>2</span><span style="font-size: 12px;">. I consider adding a rule that if the Subject is "Test" or contains the phrase "</span><span style="font-size: 12px;">Mailing list operation was: Test message</span><span style="font-size: 12px;">" then send the message to my junk email folder, with the bonus that it will work over all my email lists.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12px;">In this case I chose the later. Problem solved for me. I can move on. May I suggest everybody else who takes offence at test messages does too?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12px;">Mike</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12px;">PS. Can we all be sure not to change the subject line for this conversation? It might break my mail filter and I might end up wasting time reading emails I don't want to receive :-)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12px;">On 18.11.2014 19:33, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:</span></p>
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<pre>On Tue 18 Nov 2014 07:42:45 NZDT +1300, Richard Jones wrote:</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">Are you arguing against test driven development?</blockquote>
<pre>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.</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">Or re-observing that hindsight is an exact science?</blockquote>
<pre>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).</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">Maybe it is time to formulate some rules / guidelines regarding posts to our email reflector?</blockquote>
<pre>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.</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">I'm quite happy to receive and respond to the odd test message if someone has a problem.</blockquote>
<pre>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
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