Last word on HTML roll of shame for 27/09/00

date posted 28th September 2000 22:58

George, at the risk of adding to unhelpful posts (it will be my last on the
subject too) I did catch a sense of humour to your posts, despite being
'named and shamed' in at least one of them.
I too feel this is a useful forum, but it is in the nature of such things
(in my limited experience) that they get sidetracked occasionally. It isn't
difficult to skim the first line of an email and simply delete it if it is
of no use/interest, so I can deal with 100+ emails and still do some useful
work. However, general point has been accepted, I think, and if Morgan can
get the FAQ thing going, perhaps the list can return to a constructive and
mutually beneficial resource for all of us trying to Freelance.... and I can
skin a cat with Photoshop, if anyone wants to mail me off list (HTML or not)
;o)
Cheers, Paul.

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Dillon" [EMAIL REMOVED]
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 5:00 PM
Subject: FN-FORUM - Aplogies for (HTML roll of shame for 27/09/00)


> Ok, humble apologies to all for the rantings... i shall say
> no more about it...

As the originator of the Roll of Shame, I too want to apologise.

Even though most of you seem to have realised my equating senders of
HTML-email with paedophiles was intended to be humorous, I'd like to
apologise to anyone who was seriously offended by my continuation of the
thread this morning. As I said when I started this thing - "my simple
solution... may well be the wrong thing to do." I did think twice before
doing it again, but the devil got the better of me and I hit that send
button.

There are some folk who have repeatedly mailed this list exclusively in html
for months despite numerous requests from admin and others for them to stop.
Despite the effectiveness of my method of bringing the issue to the
attention of, and eliciting a reaction from, some of the worst offenders it
seems that some innocent parties have also been hurt by my well-intentioned
highlighting of one aspect of a problem which has blighted this list lately.

My own recent experience of having to talk a tearful friend through the
cleaning of kak off her boss's system lowered my tolerance of html-mail in
general and led to my OTT response to the recent flood of it here. (Anyone
interested in knowing more about the kak.worm can mail me off-list and I'll
send it to you ;)

> I would ask the forum administrators this: Please do not send me any
> more name and shame mails.

As Dan has said, this was nothing to do with admin. It was the
self-regulation principle in action. Mea Culpa! I had no intention of
starting a flame war, and I'll say no more on the subject after this post.

> As far as I am concerned these postings are about
> as useful as spam

IMNSHO ;) this list was in serious danger of being swamped by the numerous
posts per day emanating from a small number of selfish and irresponsible
individuals with no understanding of basic list etiquette. Maybe in naming
names two days running I took my reaction a tad too far... and for that I'm
genuinely sorry... However, the desired result was achieved with less than
4 mails from me, so overall that represents a considerable saving. (I do
not consider myself responsible for any replies to my posts).

I wrote earlier that the html-mail was 'one aspect' of a problem on this
list. I was away for most of August... when I came back I was shocked to
find this list seemed to have been hijacked by 4 or 5 individuals sending
each other (and the rest of us) several messages a day consisting frequently
of one line of nothing in particular in HTML-format.

Like others on this list, it's not the only one to which I subscribe
and occasionally contribute. Receiving 200+ emails a day I have to
question whether each subscription remains valuable. FNFORUM was
created to fill a particular niche, and remains (AFAIK) the primary
location for UK freelancers to discuss freelancing issues, and so I regard
it as uniquely valuable.

So, Dan, I also want to apologise to you for lowering the tone.

I recall, in the early days of this list, someone making a noisy exit,
disgusted at the number of OT and "funny" posts - and I was somewhat
surprised that he included coding questions in his definition of what
he considered OT for this list.

Now I think he may well have been right. FNFORUM has been on the slide, and
while I've been tempted to cancel my subscription, I'd rather appeal and
argue for everyone on this list to become more disciplined about not
straying too far or too often from the original purpose. After all, there
are plenty of other places for beginners to ask how to get their tables to
work in Netscape or how to skin a cat using the latest version of Flash.

George Dillon

P.S. Another meeting in Brighton anyone?