Sent by Eric A. Meyer on 19 April 2002 10:10
Hi folks,
It's time for my semi-periodic unscheduled "notes from the List
Chaperone" posting, so sit back, get comfy, grab some popcorn, and
enjoy.
First, a reminder/appeal/gripe: PLEASE trim your quoted text!
PLEASE!!! I've seen a recent upswing in messages that have somewhere
around three lines of text followed by 50 lines of quoted material,
or vice versa. Both are wrong. Cut down what you quote to a bare
minimum, or dump it altogether. The original-text-to-quoted-text
ratio of any message should be at least 1:1, and ideally 5:1 or
higher. It takes all of two seconds to do this, maybe as many as
five if you're quoting out portions of a message. Do us all the
courtesy of taking that little bit of extra time.
This is more important than it seems, so please don't be lazy
about it. I'm already getting complaints about this problem from
digest subscribers, who suffer the most when list members indulge in
lazy, excessive quoting. In the future, I'll just have them complain
to offenders directly by sending them copies of messages
demonstrating the problem. Get me? Good.
Second: a few people have told me that they feel discouraged from
posting because they don't want to run the "disapproval gauntlet," as
one person put it. That needs to change. If someone posts a message
saying "I'm trying to get this to work in browsers X, B, and K," that
is NOT a request to be told why browser B is a horrible piece of
dreck and should be ignored by everyone, everywhere, forever. So
don't take it that way. If you know of a way to make the intended
effect work in all the listed browsers, then by all means share it.
If you are certain that the effect can't be done in one of the listed
browsers, share that. If you don't know either way, then let it go.
Okay? Thanks.
Next up: a request that if you post a URL to the list, and the
content on that page might be considered offensive or tasteless, give
the list members fair warning. Some people on the list work for
companies where a "content monitor" runs on the firewall, and they
have to explain (in writing!) every incident of a visit to a
"naughty" Web page-- even if just a single word triggers the monitor.
So if you like to curse in your Weblog and you ask for help with your
CSS, that's fine, but let others know that content of the site might
be considered offensive by some.
Almost finally, a few words about mail delivery. Digests go out
at least once a day, so if you stop seeing them for a few days,
assume your account was suspended due to delivery problems. Ditto
for regular mail delivery-- if a couple of days go by and you haven't
seen any mail, you can probably assume that the account got
suspended. This happens automatically if an account generates
excessive bounces. Furthermore, if your account generates enough
mail delivery failures to annoy the admins, you may get your mail
manually suspended. The only reason we EVER suspend mail delivery is
due to mail delivery problems. We never suspend mail delivery
because a member has violated list policies.
If your account gets suspended, we'll leave it in place for a
while. You should certainly feel free to correct whatever problem
caused the bounces and re-enable mail delivery. Every few months,
I'll go through and unsubscribe any account that A) was suspended
more than a few weeks prior and B) is still suspended; that is, the
subscriber hasn't re-enabled delivery. In fact, I've done this once
already-- 30 accounts were pruned as a result.
But do NOT (and I mean NOT) send an "is the list alive?" message
to the list. You can find out if you have mail delivery enabled by
going to <http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/css-discuss> and
logging into the "Subscriber Options" area. If mail delivery has
been suspended, you'll see a big warning message across the top. If
you don't see a big suspension warning, then your account is fine.
Similarly, if you want to change your account options, go to the
above URL and log in.
And last: If you want to unsubscribe from the list, go to
<http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/css-discuss> and log in.
On the next screen, enter your password in the "Unsubscribing" area
and click on the "Unsubscribe" button. If your attempt to
unsubscribe from the list generates an actual error message, then
please send the full text of the error message to
[EMAIL-REMOVED]' so we can investigate. If for some
reason you can't figure out how to unsubscribe, take a break, have a
snack, relax, and then go back to the above URL and try again. As a
last resort, if you're completely baffled, send a message to
[EMAIL-REMOVED]' that explains that you can't figure
out how to unsubscribe, and would like some help. Above all, do not
send abusive e-mail to either the list or the administrators. That
would make me grouchy. You wouldn't like me when I'm grouchy.
Thank you for your time and attention. That is all.
--
Eric A. Meyer [EMAIL-REMOVED]) http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/
Author, "Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide" and
"CSS 2.0 Programmer's Reference" http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/books/
