Re: Important Info on comp.databases.postgresql.general

Hi Kevin,

I'm probably a bit more concerned about this than you are... I don't
want to have to post anonymously just to protect my email address...
That is precisely why I stopped using Usenet about 5 years ago - it just
got overwhelming...

I hope the owner of this list considers this issue very carefully.. I for
one will probably find support for Postgres through other mechanisms (I'm
not sure what those would be yet) if what you are suggesting may come to
pass actually does....

The quality of this mailing list has always been extremely high and it
would be a real shame to lose that....

I know that I surely do not need any more spam... To say nothing of jerks
posting infantile messages... I have a job to do and this list (as it is
now) is an integral part of that....

From what it sounds like the Usenet folks have decided up until now not
to participate on the Postgres mailing list for whatever reason.. I can
only surmise that it is not that important to them --- it is to me though
(and I imagine a lot of other people)... Why do we need to suffer at
their expense?..... I mean if they are going to actually contribute -
great, but that is simply not what appears to be happening here....

I'm certainly trying to be open minded here, but what I've seen so far
coming from them is not exactly impressing me and it is not too hard to
imagine that it only will get worse from here.

The reasons about "increased participation" only works if that
participations is meaningful, which it simply doesn't seem to be.

I'm not trying to be harsh, but a good portion of Usenet posters strike
me as brats who don't know how to behave and whoever it is that is
managing this "switch" has not done an adequate job of explaining why we
should put up with them or in the alternative what is going to be done to
keep it to a minimum (IMHO).

- Greg

>Currently the mailing list is also hosted in a newsgroup at
>new.postgresql.org. The news group is not "Official" so it is not
>carried by all news servers. There are some users who can not
>participate in a mailing list comfortably for one reason or another.
>Some of these individuals would like their local USENET provider to
>carry the news group. Because postgresql isn't official they will not
>do this. So there is now a movement to make the list official.
>
>The extra traffic I believe is coming from the discussion of the
>USENET people trying to get this done. Most USENET folk are good
>manor people just like you find on the lists.
>
>There are a lot of politics involved in USENET that are not present in
>your typical mailing list. This is primarily because mailing lists
>are hosted by the project/group and involve a single mail server where
>as USENET is many servers and many topics.
>
>As near as I can tell the main person pushing for making the list an
>official news group has inadvertently, or maybe advertently, offended
>someone with his politics, and/or lack of knowledge of the USENET
>process. Nothing big but with politics comes grudges etc.
>
>The other thing that I have noticed is people seem to get into more
>flame wars on USENET compared to mailing lists. There are many
>reasons for this but they are irrelevant. Part of this process of
>flaming and what not is the jerk forged message to piss people off.
>In particular I think the forger was attempting to sway the
>creditability , of the person being forged, to the people that make
>the USENET decisions. The chatter is there to inform anyone who might
>be fooled.
>
>If this push is successful are we likely to see a few jerks posting on
>the list via USENET? Yes, but I believe we will see an increase in
>useful posts from people who would not otherwise participate.
>
>Another downside is the email addresses on the list will get spread
>around more which increase the change of them getting harvested by a
>spam mer. USENET people tend to get around this by using fake email
>addresses for USENET that can be modified by a human when the real
>address is needed. Mailing lists typically don't mask the email
>address, and since you can't fake an address if you wish to get email,
>everyone on the list will increase there changes of being spammed, but
>maybe only slightly. This isn't necessarily a big deal because
>several people have a separate mailing list address and/or have spam
>prevention in place.
>
>Wow this turned into a bigger message then I intended :-)
>
>On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:03:48 -0700, Net Virtual Mailing Lists
><mailinglists(at)net-virtual(dot)com> wrote:
>> Yeah.. I'm with you.. I don't really know what all of this is about - I
>> like the way the Postgres mailing list works as it is.... Are any of the
>> changes being discussed here going to change the content or how we
>> receive the mailing lists?..
>>
>> .. The only change I've noticed is that in all the time of reading this
>> list I've not seen jerks posting forged messages like that....
>> Certainly not a positive change, but I'm not sure it can be attributed to
>> what is going on...
>>
>> - Greg
>>
>>
>>
>> >??? As a longstanding reader of the pgsql-
>> >mailinglists, (including via news.postgresql.org on
>> >occasion), all I see is some outsiders trying to help
>> >us "fix" a problem that does not exist. And yes, I
>> >have read most of the messages that have passed by in
>> >these threads. After all that, I still don't see the
>> >benefit.
>> >
>> >Perhaps that is why these conversations have been
>> >carried on almost totally by people who do not post to
>> >the pgsql lists.
>>
>> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
>> TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
>>
>