On Thursday 29 October 2020 04:00:09 Janek Stolarek wrote: > > The use of “worked in an office environment” was a reference to any group > > of [non-blood related] people. “Chit-chat” is a reference to any > > communication between humans (and within this thread’s context a label of > > “non-productive” is probably appropriate). > > Well in that case, there are times and places that are appropriate for > chit-chat and there are ones that are not. I have many times participated > in meetings that were organized to discuss work-related matters (current > research, teaching, etc.) but were hijacked by 2 or 3 people to talk about > private issues unrelated to the reason why remaining 7-8 people have come > for the meeting. These 2 or 3 people might have had fun talking but for the > remaining majority of people this was unproductive and a waste of time. As > was already said this list was created to give a fairly small community of > TDE users a place to discuss TDE-related issues. The fact that several > individuals have turned this list into their own private social media is > regretable. The reason why I said I'll probably unsubscribe from the list > if this goes on was not to somehow blackmail any of the said individuals - > becuase I doubt they'll notice or care - but to make the list moderators > aware that the community might be eroding because of the messy state of the > list. I know at least several people on the list are happy with the way the > list is at the moment. This is called a selection bias: ones that didn't > like the list have silently left and no one noticed. > > There was a suggestion earlier to use filters. That's what I do at the > moment. I use a KMail filter to put all tde-users emails into a dedicated > folder and mark them as read. My original intention was to look into the > folder at my leisure and respond to those emails where I can help someone. > But the sheer amount of off-topic email is often so huge that it's just too > much effort trying to pick out the on-topic ones. > > So, a humble request to list moderators: can we turn this list into a > moderated one where every email needs to be approved and thus all off-topic > emails can be rejected? Many lists on the internet work this way. > Enforicing the discussion rules is a common practice, not some sort of > mystical attempt to fight against the laws of the universe. > > Janek I am responding in part to another user, Steven D'Aprano, because it bears on what I say here. I was rather misparaphrased, and my thoughts were distorted into something quite different; probably not intentionally, but still a misrepresentation. The TDE mailing list was not compared to a job; what I said (or at least meant to say) was that, for people who work in tech, or whose jobs involve dealing with such issues on a daily basis, or whose jobs keep them too busy for idle chit-chat, then our off-topic discussions must be incredibly annoying, and I do feel their pain. If their inboxes are getting 50-75 emails a day, and in the TDE mailing list we have a long off-topic discussion of apfelstrudel and the kopfs who eat it, or, for example, "How many Nazis does it take to torture a kitten to death?" -- Well yes, I do understand: we are wasting your precious time. The subtext was, Gene and I, for example, are retired from the rat-race, live alone, and don't mind off-topic distractions from strictly-business discussions of technical issues. I don't know the age of others on the list, but I am guessing that most of the chit-chat comes from people who are rather older, who don't have any urgent or serious business; and all the kitten-killing Nazis who want to censor and control everything, and beg for moderators to save them from this madness and chaos, I believe we would find, are comparatively younger, and have jobs that claim their time. While I am now semi-retired, I do remember how it was to work 60-70 hours a week, toiling away at very hard, gruelling, physical jobs which gradually destroyed my health. So I was not standing round an imaginary water-cooler. But before that, until about 1996, I worked either in universities, or with magazines and newspapers, and also as a free-lancer and a reader for publishers. So I do get it; I can understand your point of view, and I do wish that there were some way that we could find or create, so that we could all just get along. We have suggested a forum, or a separate OT mailing list; I have also said that anybody is welcome to email me directly, or to use jabber/xmpp for private chat. But so far, none of these are generally accepted, and the only "reasonable" solutions, according to some, is for the moderators to take a heavier hand, to make stricter rules and enforce them without mercy. Please spare me any more of this discussion; it is the thread that never dies, but periodically revives, again and again. It is all vanity and a vexation of the spirit. Bill P.S. I don't seriously believe that anybody here is a Nazi, or even that they hate kittens, but I wanted to be sure that I worked them in. ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
