[pmwiki-users] Can this spammer...
Petko Yotov
5ko at 5ko.fr
Wed Nov 7 13:00:14 CST 2012
> > Why don't you get a life, Shout, or whoever you are?
> > People like you go around vandalizing PmWiki sites that aren't securely
> > locked, or hidden.
> Furthermore I would be delighted if you, John, would watch your language
> while posting to pmwiki-users. I also want to point out, that it was Tamara
> who suggested that you’d be removed from the list. It is true though, that I
> have backed up her proposal, but I am at a loss what your accusations
> directed at me are based on.
This kind of language is indeed not welcome here, the PmWiki mailing lists
have always been a nice place where courteousy is the rule.
This enthousiastic user is a newcomer (to the internet) and may benefit from
some guidance about the "netiquette". I don't believe there is a need to
remove him from the list.
To John, there are a couple of things about the form:
1. If you actively participate in the mailing list, you may want to disable
the mailing list digest, and start receiving single messages. You can set
this here: http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users .
2. When you start a new "thread" or a new topic unrelated to a previous
discussion, make sure you start a new, empty e-mail, and don't reply to a
previous message.
3. When you reply to a message in the same topic, just use the "reply"
function of your e-mail program.
The reason for these points are the "e-mail threads" which will otherwise
appear broken in the archives and on peoples' computers. Most e-mail clients
can order the messages by the thread, and many people use this ordering to
see which message was a reply to which one. (When one replies, some hidden
references are included in the message, so the e-mail clients and the
mailing lists know that it is a reply). If these references are lost (new
message instead of reply) or wrong (reply instead of a new message), your e-
mail will not be correctly stored and displayed on other peoples' computers.
Obviously, if you receive the digest instead of individual messages, you
never have the references of the individual messages to which you reply. So
you always start a new thread, and this may annoy some users (who may decide
to ignore the e-mails).
Also, when you receive the digest, you may overlook who said what, and you
can mistakenly reply to a different person, as you just did. (The lines
preceded by ">" or just indented to the right are quotations from other
people, and may be written by a different person than the author of the
message.)
About the content, there are also some observations:
1. If you have any question about PmWiki, you are welcome to ask it on the
mailing list.
2. If your idea is excellent and extremely useful but is only marginally
related to PmWiki - for example, speeding up Apache or using another PHP
script, another mailing list might be a better place - for example the
Apache mailing list. However, sometimes it might not be a good place, see
below.
3. Two dozens excellent ideas are worth half a penny. If you have not yet
implemented your idea and run some tests to prove that it works as you think
it does, it might not look very serious, so it may be a bad idea to try to
impose it on a community of advanced or expert users. If you have done the
implementation, you have a website, publish an article about it with all
tests and benchmarks. If it works, you will help other people.
4. If you have done a PmWiki recipe, feel free to publish it in the
pmwiki.org Cookbook. But see the next one below.
5. If you are not certain that something is safe, or if you just started
working with servers and PHP, or if you feel you lack some knowledge, or if
you are not prepared to reply/explain to even less experienced users, it may
be a good idea to first learn more.
6. Note that the mailing list archives are public and everyone on the
internet can read them, now and in the future. One more reason to remain
courteous and civil, and to not claim things that are not true, for example,
accusing other users of vandalizing wikis.
Note to myself: really off-topic messages in limited numbers should be
simply ignored.
Petko
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