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 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers.
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