[Wine] After years - goodbye to Wine-Users

[Paul Johnson]

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On Friday 04 April 2008 06:18:48 pm DARKGuy . wrote:
> The forum could top-quote the whole thread (or the last 5 messages +
> title?) in these cases.

It would be better if it encouraged conversational quoting, since a 
well-quoted message will still make sense out of proper thread context, even 
if previous messages never made it.  There's no need to go have it spit out 
ancient history from upthread...

Speaking of which, I know correct quoting is readily possible in gmail; 
strongly consider doing that instead of top-posting.

> I, however, find it a silly decision to make. I don't see what's the
> big issue about it. I've been getting tons of emails and I'm at my
> 736Mb/6589Mb already (and I made this account 4-5 years ago), and
> also, what's the point of still having old, old old old list emails,
> that might have been discussions over bugs or fixes that are already
> applied and working fine? I know, it's stupid to say but I wanted to
> point something out.

It's often easier to search one's own archives than, say, a forum.

> You seem to be unsatisfied at the "lack of techy-ness" of the emails.
> Well, let me remember you that this is wine-USERS. By users, I'm
> talking about people ranging to those who don't even know what the
> hell WINE is and ask that, in the forum they reached by the website
> that explains what WINE is, to people who can code you a brand new
> algorithm for anything you can think of in a day. It also means you
> can find full ranters, flamers (like those who randomly spit caps and
> pointless arguments for the hell of it, then try to be the wise ones
> afterwards) and almost every spawn on the net.

I can recall a time when wine-users rightfully sent people to the 
documentation, preferring to save list traffic for firefighting trickier 
problems not readily gleaned from the documentation.

> "Oh, I'm too elitist, wine-users isn't for me because of the noobs" is
> what your email said to me in a few words. Not with intentions to be
> offensive, in fact it was very polite :), but you know, it's a downer.

I would take a closer look at causation instead of dwelling on the consequence 
to prevent such things from happening in the future.  Chasing away 
experienced users does a great disservice to new users in the long term.

> I sincerely hope you can re-think your decision and, instead, help
> improve the mailing list's quality (and the emails too) by helping the
> new users. You weren't born self-taught, and I'm sure you might have
> done two or three stupid things in your life and maybe "decreased the
> quality level" in your family or friends or social groups or parties
> or whatever. I've done that a few times, nobody's perfect.

There's a readily apparent difference between social environments and 
technically oriented lists.

- -- 
Paul Johnson
baloo at ursine.ca
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