Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Cut of April DVD imminent

[Julian T J Midgley]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, James Blackwell wrote:
> That would be anywhere from 5 to 20 times a day that I would have to add
> that header by hand. Frankly it would be easier to set up a procmail
> script that /dev/nulls people that habitually cc me and the list.

It will be the work of a moment to add the following to your
.procmailrc, after which the problem will go away forever, you need
never think about it again, and you'll be able to edit your .sig to stop
it provoking off-topic discussions such as this on every mailing list you
post to:


              :0 Whc: msgid.lock
              | formail -D 1048576 msgid.cache

              :0 a:
              $HOME/mail/duplicates

See procmailex(8), and search for "duplicate".

>
> This is my quirk. Humor me. Just take my name off the CC: list and say to
> yourself "Hey! I just did a small thing that made one particular person
> happier!"

No.  Or I shall insist on asking you to humour me when I ask you to set a
special header in any email you wish me to read, as follows:

JTJMs-Personal-Bloody-Silly-Header: Life is too short

(It's a great anti-spam trick, honest ;-) )

I imagine most of those who post frequently to this mailing list subscribe
to many others as well.  I suspect that the total number of potential
mailing list direct correspondents (defined as people whose mailing list
postings those who post to this list reply to (on this list and others))
is greater than 100 per frequent poster).  It is tremendously selfish of
you to demand that you be treated differently from any other mailing list
correspondent, especially given that your .sig will likely be dropped
automatically the moment someone hits reply, so they may not even see your
special request.

Various technical solutions (some tried and tested for more than a decade,
such as that I mention above) exist to the duplicate mail problem.  If
duplicate mails offend you, use one of them; if not, shut up about it.
Otherwise you will presumably be happy for each of us to put a different
instruction about how we would like people to reply to our mailing list
postings in our .sigs and expect you to correctly honour each and every
request, regardless of its pointlessness.

With the system you propose, replying to a simple technical enquiry on a
mailing list will no longer be a matter of "hit reply, type answer to
question asked, send", but rather "remember to check .sig.  Follow
whatever instructions are given.  Try to remember what the question was,
answer it.  Check that the reply instructions are correctly followed lest
the correspondent become upset. Send".  I fail completely to see how
anyone's life will be improved by your suggestion, nor how it can achieve
anything other than the wasting of people's time.

All the best,

Julian

-- 
Julian T. J. Midgley                       http://www.xenoclast.org/
Cambridge, England.
PGP: BCC7863F FP: 52D9 1750 5721 7E58 C9E1  A7D5 3027 2F2E BCC7 863F