At the risk of becoming, like the pope's bike, excommunicated: in the immortal words of John McEnroe, "You cannot be serious!"
I guess it hasn't occurred to ListOberHauptmann that indolence regarding the (many, petty) rules might be passive-aggressive chafing at the bondage-and-discipline tenor of this list. Or that the time invested maintaining that might be more productively spent doing something else. Some things for the membership to consider: how popular is this particular rule, and is it really necessary?
Dale Brown carped, sanctimoniously:
> Well, I just wrote my 10 thousandth private message (possibly an
>exaggeration but it seems like that many) to a list member asking
>them to sign off on their message to this list serve.
>
>It is only common courtesy in my judgment to tell people who you are
>when you write a message. The behavior of many of the Internet's
>participants makes it a most rude and obnoxious environment; people
>hiding behind pseudonyms in the most cowardly way.... or people just
>being grossly inconsiderate and self absorbed so as to not care
>whether their correspondents know who is addressing them.
>
>I simply will not tolerate that behavior here in my "living room"
>filled with friends who share their fascination with vintage
>lightweight bicycles. And most of you agree that our standards are
>similar. And nowadays it is relatively easy to add an AUTOMATIC
>"signature" to all your emails containing the basic info about you
>and where you are from, etc.
>
>Now, with yet another very nice non-USA member, I come to realize
>again how wonderful it is to have a "community" that knows no
>boundaries, indeed a worldwide fellowship here on the web. And
>therefore it is even more important to say where you are writing
>from, without lazy or casual abbreviations.? Let me quote from rule
>#1 here:
>" Please spell that info in a
> "straight up" way, using no abbreviations or short cuts so people can
> readily understand. We want our members to know where we are from; that
> will assist in creating a community, one in which we are communicating
> "real person to real person," so to speak. If you cannot do this, for
> whatever reason, please do not join."
>
>What to do about those of you who are lazy or inattentive or
>indifferent to oblige on this basic requirement?
>
>I am already spending tons of time writing individual, non-form
>messages asking those who do not sign off properly. There seems no
>end to it. So my latest idea is to just simply suspend those
>offending persons and require them to sign up again with an
>accompanying pledge to follow the rules.... The hassle to sign up
>again is not any more than my time cost to write these redundant
>warning messages; it seems only fair.
>
>So, I will try that for a while and see how it goes.... (Sigh)
--
Charles Wahl
NYC -- if anyone reading is unsure where that is, then just email me,
and I'll be happy to help you out