From: "Charlie Summers" charlie@lofcom.com
(*sigh*) That is not correct; I am an excellent instructor. Ask around; there are a bunch of people here who have learned with my guidence. (Note
I
do not "teach," I try to "lead" people to understanding for themselves.
Trust
me, if your mother is motivated to learn, I can help her do just that.)
Seems pretty simple, really. If you (again the emperical, not the
reader
personally) want to be on the Internet, you should have a passing understanding of the software you use, and not gripe to me because I am
not
screwing things around unnecessarily on my mailing list. Just as, if you
want
to write a letter and use a spell checker, you should learn how to use
your
word processing software, and not ask your recipient to correct your
spelling
mistakes before reading your letter.
1) My mother does understand outlook express 2) The relationship between my (now emperical) mother and a recipient of her letter is a different one from the relationship between her and the supplier of a list. equal-equal vs client-supplier. I a want my bread cut in slices at the bakery, I don't want the baker to lead me into doing it, or him telling me I'm lazy.
It's not about do's and dont's. You can choose whether you want to instruct your users or adapt to their current level. Depends on the list as well. I think you will follow in this. So when you decide to change the subject line of an e-mail, and you have no principals against it, you might wonder "how?". That's the moment you ask a question. Are you a man of such great principals that you don't want to tell people how to do these things? They are not trying to build a bomb or something. They are trying to apend something to a stupid subject line on a stupid list. Not very world shocking.
I do not understand what you mean with this thing about the committee,
the
democray and the dictatorship.
I'm not surprised.
aha, yes, I can see the instructor in you :). No really, I'm interested in your opinions about this.You wrote (I paraphrase) a list would not function as a democracy, it needs a dictatorship (correct me if I put it wrong). Well, okay, that's something you hear quite often in system operators or software developers circles, allthought not allways in these words. But than you said a committee never accomplished anything. That part of your opinion is even more interesting, as it transcends the subject of mailing lists and takes it into a world view.
Sorry for my spelling mistakes. I bet there are dozens.
Jelmer