[Asterisk-Users] Enhancing list quality?

[Matthew Asham]

people complaining about list etiquette...


On Tue, 2004-11-02 at 04:45, Patrick wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Following up on Steve Szmidt's post, have we come to a point where
> something should be done about the deteriorating signal to noise ratio
> on the asterisk-users list?
> 
> Similar to other fast growing successful FOSS projects/communities, the
> Asterisk community is no exception when it comes to growing pains.
> Anyone who has been subscribed for quite some time surely has noticed:
> 
> * the lazy top posting
> * asking too simple/obvious questions that are found on voip-info.org,
>   the list archives, google and the docs that comes with the source
> * asking totally unrelated questions (the Sparco example)
> * asking why it doesn't work without giving any config info
> * the GPL license, Windoze vs. Linux, "You are clueless! No you are!"
>   discussions/flame wars that go on and on and on
> * the lack of proper trimming of posts
> * the html email sent time after time in spite of requests to 
>   turn it off
> * the huge signatures that imho are a form of spam or just a waste of
>   bandwidth
> 
> Some suggestions to hopefully improve things:
> 
> 1) change the "Welcome to the asterisk-users list" email to contain:
> 
> - before sending email to more than 8000 people, search voip-info.org,
>   the mailing list archives, google and the docs in the source
> - do not top post
> - add as much config info as possible
> - trim long posts (especially unnecessary sigs)
> - posts should be related to Asterisk
> - be nice, polite, courteous. keep flames off list
> - your sig should not be a billboard for your products/services (spam)
>   if you want to advertise your services, use asterisk-biz
> - do not send html mail to the list. It will get rejected or bounced
>   or whatever (see item 3)
> - do not use unnecessary capitals, exclamation marks and question
>   marks (don't be loud)
> - do not mail questions to asterisk-dev that are not related to the
>   actual development of asterisk
> - do not crosspost your question to asterisk-users and asterisk-dev
> - do not resend your email after 4 hours because you have not
>   received an answer. Join #asterisk on Freenode irc if you require a
>   possibly speedier answer
> 
> 2) post this info periodically to the list to remind people
> 
> 3) strip all html or bounce it back to the sender telling them to send
>    normal email, not html email. Add the list's netiquette too, just to
>    make sure. Afaik mailman is capable of stripping html from email
> 
> 4) ask the community to respond to people ignoring these reasonable
>    requests and gently point them in the right direction
> 
> Feedback welcome.
> 
> Regards,
> Patrick
> 
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