[conspire] wtf ? sonic

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ross Bernheim (rossbernheim at speakeasy.net):

> It is all too easy to click on the wrong button because they are not
> as clearly labeled as they might be and people are lazy and don't
> think or don't fully understand the differences between reply and
> reply all.

Oh, I know that.  It wasn't exactly brain-surgery to figure _that_ out.
The difficult thing was to figure out how to gracefully deal with the
situation.

Of course, I expected for many years that people would be a little more 
careful when participating in community discussions, so as to not abuse the
people they're seeking help from, but learned the hard way that that is
sadly not the case, and that user education by and large just doesn't
work at all.  And I do have, as mentioned, a solution I arrived at:  I
just post the unexpectedly offlist mail, or sometimes just my reply,
with a note saying 'Seems to have been sent offlist by accident.
Remember, if you actually need private mail, say so when you go
offlist.'  Seems to work.

One or two people _have_ bitched like crazy, when I do that, and quoted 
to the public forum my as-yet unrevised
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=netiquette#offlist FAQ
item, and then going onwards to call me unethical:  I have drawn the
logical conclusion that they are precisely the malign 0.1% who were
attempting to pull a small con-job all along.

Really.  They actually have.  You'll find a few of those
passive-aggressive paskudnyaks in the archives of this mailing list and
the SVLUG list.


> Electrons are very inexpensive....

Likewise, the time, effort, and community commitment of _other_ people.  ;->

(No, you didn't mean that.  Many people do act that way, though.)