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Re: OT: offending sig + headers



On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 06:24:23PM -0700, Darrin Chandler wrote:
> > Perhaps you mean to suggest that you think I'm arrogant.
> 
> No. I don't demand that people be humble. I was talking more about the
> problem that you've stopped listening to people because you're smarter.
> You're not so smart, after all.

I haven't stopped listening... but people do tend to keep repeating
the same arguments that I've already rehashed a billion times over the
last 5 years.  Not much has really happened with regard to fighting
spam in the last few years.  Filters have improved, but they're still
not good enough, and probably never will be.  Any time a mail is
filtered to /dev/null, you simply can not be sure it was not a mail
you wanted -- it's all too easy for some unexpected condition to throw
a wrench in your filtering machine, proverbially speaking.  Filtering
mail into a review folder defeats the purpose of spam filtering.  The
only real solution is to prevent it from ever being sent to you, which
I have done very effectively.

> If you're pissing people off just by participating, you might take a
> second to consider that you, a single person with odd ideas, might
> actually be more wrong than everyone else in the community. 

I have taken far more than a second to consider that...  For
centuries, people thought the world was flat.  Some people still do.
When Columbus suggested the idea that the world was round (he was not
the first, just the most notable), he was laughed at by nearly
everyone IN THE WORLD.  But he persisted, and (re)discovered North
America.  I can deal with a few people on a mailing list thinking I'm
crazy.

My methods are odd, but they are also the only solution that works for
me, because I simply must not lose mail.  I rely on it way too
heavily.  The benefits of my methods (to me) are undeniable.  If a few
people on the list are offended that they can't easily contact me
privately, I can live with that, because frankly *I don't want them
to*, generally speaking.  I don't think that should preclude me from
participating in public forums such as this one.  Indeed, forum
software exists that by design hides the identity and contact info of
the participants, for exactly that reason.  Unfortunately, the mutt
user community does not use such a mechanism (though honestly, I much
prefer e-mail, so I'm glad of that -- still waiting for anonymizing
mailing list management software).  Besides which, as has already been
well established, if someone really had a compelling reason to contact
me privately, it really just isn't that hard.

A mailing list is a public forum, and the discussions that stem from
it should be held publicly.  If I wanted a private answer, I would
have called one of my sysadmin buddies, who all use mutt, and some of
whom could probably have answered my question off the top of their
head.  Instead, I decided to ask a question which I thought could
benefit a lot of people in this very public forum, hoping for a public
answer that could benefit more people than just me.  I ended up
finding the answer myself before anyone posted about it, and I
answered my own question on list.

Remember that this (sub)thread started because Thomas essentially
attacked my methods, by calling my sig offensive.  Had he not done so,
this thread never would have happened, and you would be none the wiser
about my arrogant nature (well, unless you've been around for a
while -- certain hot button topics come up here from time to time).
The thread would have ended with my self-answer post, which no doubt
someone else somewhere found beneficial, or will someday as they
search the archives.  I don't believe my sig offends most people, and
I certainly don't think it should.  I don't see any reason why anyone
should have any objection to my desire to not receive personal mail
from people on the list.  The whole idea seems inane, particularly
given the inherently public nature of this forum.  Can you explain it?

Given that I don't want to receive private mail to responses to my
posts in a public forum, I have no choice but to make it known that
replying to that address won't get you anything but a bounce.  A few
people might think my sig is rude, but it would be far ruder to keep
people in the dark and allow them to attempt private message delivery
to an address that doesn't exist, don't you think?  My sig is a
concise statement of that fact, along with a concise explanation of
why.  I hardly think anyone should find that offensive, and one might
argue that the very reason they do might be  because they think they
know better than I do, and think my methods are contemptable.  Just as
you accuse me of the same.

By contrast, I have not bashed anyone else's chosen method of fighting
spam; and indeed they all have their own merits.  I've simply said
that mine is better from a technical standpoint, which it is, because
it's a more complete solution.  I see no reason to be offended about
that, either.

> Do you understand that other people don't seem to like the way you're
> operating? Do you see that even if you explain why to people now, that
> you're going to irritate somebody tomorrow and next week and a year from
> now? 

Sure.  I can be very irritating sometimes.  And also lots of people
get irritated by the silliest of things.  If you go through life
worrying about the possibility of offending people, you'll never
interact with anyone, because you have no idea what will offend some
people.

> And that this has everything to do with you, and very little to do
> with them?

No, that I don't see at all.  I don't see how my refusal to post from
a valid address could possibly harm anyone but me, and I stipulate
that it does not harm me.  As hard as I have tried to understand the
notion that my sig is offensive, I can't escape the belief that people
who are offended by this are just being silly.

> I'm probably wasting my time here, as you've likely had similar
> discussions and not learned the important lessons yet.

And apparently, given that I'm well beyond my developmental years,  I
probably never will, in your eyes.  But in truth, you have no idea
what I've learned, and the lessons I value as important may be very
different from the ones you value.  Whatever I have or have not
learned, I have acheived long ago what I consider to be "success" and
continue to enjoy it, and for the most part I'm happy with that, and
I'm happy with who I am.  

So, there's that.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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