🚀 go-pugleaf

[Followups to news.admin.misc.  Why is austin.internet in there?
Oh, posted and e-mailed.]

In article <46l2u4$g10@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
Cyronwode <cyronwode@aol.com> wrote:
>abbyfg@tezcat.com (Abby Franquemont-Guillory) wrote 
>> I think back as little as a year ago, we were all sitting around trying
>> to come up with ways to get AOL to educate its users or, if they 
>> wouldn't, how could we do it ourselves?  Those efforts have not been
>> a glowing success, despite the effort a lot of people have put into
>> them.  It becomes an increasingly sysyphean task.  At this point, a
>> lot of the people who used to spend hours answering questions, 
>> giving pointers to information, giving helpful hints, and so forth,
>> have just plain given up, largely because of ending up about as
>> black and blue and charbroiled as we'd get trying to save the life of
>> someone drowning in boiling oil.
>
>You went on to give an example that included your personally replying to
>people in a newsgroup. I tried that for a while, but i began to burn out,
>so for the past year i have been using boiler plate letters to cover
>common situations arising from new users making mistakes. Here are 3
>samples of the things i send out. 

Are you perhaps expecting some sort of award, Miss Theresa?

>================================
>
>Sample #1 -- politely explaining the nuisance of AOL "me too" posts and
>giving a simple lesson in usenet style. 
>
>================================
>I can tell you want to get involved in the discussions in xxx, but you are
>not going about it the right way. As a fellow AOL user who has learned a
>little about usenet, i'd like to suggest a better way for you to reach
>folks, okay? 

AOL could hire a competant programmer or two?

>Sample #2 -- for those who are confused about the differences between a
>usenet group, a mailing list, e-mail, and a forum on AOL. 
>
>================================
>
>I saw your question in xxx and i thought i'd try to give you my two cents
>on the differences between a usenet group, a mailing list, e-mail, and a
>forum on AOL.  
>
>The internet is a vast highway system. It passes by every house in the
>world.

Bullshit.  Do you generally lie to people?

>Usenet newsgroups (like alt.xxx) are big public bulletin boards you
>can travel to via this highway system, in order to read messages (posts)
>left
>there by like-minded folks and leave messages in return. 
>
>E-mail is like a hand-delivered letter transported along the highway
>system
>from someone else's house to yours. 
>
>Mailing lists (like xxx-list) are round-robin letter chains -- you
>drive your letter to a guy with a photocopy machine and he duplicates it
>and
>then drives along the highway delivering copies to everyone on his list
>(including you). 
>
>In order to get onto the highway, you need two things -- a car and a
>driveway. 

Too bad there isn't a driver's test.

>Among these extra services are "chat rooms" (party-lines where
>you can send e-mail messages in real time to people who have the same
>driveway builder and the same colour gravel that you do) and "special
>interest groups" (bulletin boards or clubs or forums where you can leave
>messages for like-minded folks who have the same driveway builder and the
>same colour gravel that you do). 

Gee, usenet newsgroups and IRC.  What a remarkable idea.

>Sample #3 -- For those who have signed onto a mailing list but aren't
>quite sure what it is or how to use it or why they keep seeing "subscribe"
>or bounced mail messages.
>
>================================
>
>A mailing list is a computer program that duplicates messages and sends
>them to eveyone on its subscription list, so that the messages appear in
>their e-mail. 
>
>You are subscribed to xxx, which is a mailing list run by xxx at xxx,
>which distributes e-mail to a list of folks interested in xxx. That means
>that anything you send to the list will appear in the e-mail of the
>mailing list's subscribers and anything they send to the list will appear
>in your e-mail. 

"xxx at xxx"

Not "xxx at yyy", or some other thing that can be used by e, vi, emacs,
or a hundred other unix editors to do search and replace, reformat,
and send.

>This mailing list is a public forum -- anyone can join, as with a
>newsgroup -- but like all mailing lists, it is designed to serve small
>groups, usually those with under 200 subscribers, where the anticipated
>traffic volume is less than 20 messages per day. 

Not all mailing lists are public forums, not all mailing lists are
designed for small groups, not all mailing lists have anticipated
volumes of < 20 messages per day.

Reference:  TXN-L, the bears mailing list, and the FoxPro users mailing
list.

>If you are going to subscribe (join) or unsubscribe (leave) any mailing
>list, it is considered good form to use the subject heading "Subscribe" or
>"Unsubscribe" when requesting attention from the automated program. 

It's also a good idea to include it as the entirity of the body of your
message, since some handlers don't recognize the subject line.

>As with most boiler plate, i have to go in an customize each letter i send
>(the mailing list one tries to cover numerous options and requires the
>most snippage), but in writing boiler plate it is better to write more
>than less, and cut to fit. 

You say this like it actually takes you some time to do it.
-- 
According to Kendrick Moxon, lawyer and expert witness for the cult of
Scientology, the fact that Jesus was a pedophile is a part of the cult
of Scientology's holy scriptures.  Read alt.religion.scientology for more!