On Tue, Jul 04, 2000 at 12:38:00AM +0000, Derek Balling wrote:
> I'm going to jump into this fray here and now.

Does the fact that some people do not like using the BBS interface for one
or several of the reasons I've listed before
(http://empeg.merlins.org/archives//empeg-general/2000-May/001443.html)
somehow bother you?
I understand that a good percentage of the BBS users disagree with those
points, and that's fine, I respect this.
The only people I'm pissed at are the ones who wrote the actual BBS code and
have made my job (offering Email copies of the messages) really hard. When
in the commercial version, that they charge money for, they managed to break
one of the 3 headers they feed to the mail interface, and made it non Y2K
compliant in the process, I got a little peed.

> I'm going to explicitly forbid Marc's list from copying any of my posts
> from this moment further. The body of my posts is copyrighted by me, and
> by and large I don't care what happens to it, but I think screen-scraping
> the web forums to feed a mailing list is ass-backwards, and I won't allow
> my content to be a part of it.

While the list members thank you for your kindness, you are (probably)
entitled to this request, so I spent some more of my copious free time [tm]
to accomodate you and not feed the messages you post.

> There already exist two different forums, depending on your tastes. There
> is the Empeg BBS (web-based, right here), and there is an empeg mailing
> list ([email protected]). Whichever "mode" of getting data suits your
> fancy, the method already exists to do it.

This is utter bull and you know it. The other list is dead, and we both know
that it's not because everyone who reads this BBS does it by choice, it's
just the only place where posts happen.
I have no idea what that percentage is, but I know that some percentage of
the people who read this board would much rather have all those discussions
on a mailing list that ends up in their mailbox.
This is not a flame, but even the empeg folks do not post anything outside
of the BBS, so if you're not on it, you don't know what's happening.

> If its a matter of "wanting to keep up with what's on the web forum
> without the hassle of the web forum", there is the ability to have the BBS
> e-mail you, daily, digests of whichever boards you are interested in. Just
> edit your profile, and its right there (always has been).

Have you read those digests? Have you followed threads on them? They're a
complete disaster...
I also find it interesting that you're cool with people reading the digest,
but not the digest when it's been massaged a bit and split into individual
messages.

> There is absolutely no reason to divide the users of the web forum in this
> manner. Keep the posts, and the replies, on the board where they belong.

I'm not going to make the point that the BBS divided the mailing list that
existed, and caused its death, but you get the idea.

Are you angry because you have the feeling that you're missing stuff by
being just on the BBS? Do you even know? Turns out that there are virtually
no threads on the mailing list side: either the person takes the time to
find the message on the BBS and post the answer there, or he/she answers the
poster directly, sometimes with a Cc to the list.
Are you pissed at me because one could occasionally not want to spend the
time to log into the BBS, find the message and answer there?
Am I responsible if you use a message exchange forum that is uninviting to
some and that they can decide that they won't bother to participate as a
result?

If someone could be rightfully angry, that's the mailing list users for
having had all the discussions move to a place hard to access. Yet, I'm not
angry. I respect your choice, I deal with it the best I can (i.e. gateway)
and I leave you in piece.

Have a nice day,
Marc

Check out the <A HREF=http://empeg.merlins.org/ target=n>the forum mailing lists</A>