[pmwiki-users] Can this spammer...

Petko Yotov 5ko at 5ko.fr
Wed Nov 7 13:00:14 CST 2012


> > Why don't you get a life, Shout, or whoever you are?
> > People like you go around vandalizing PmWiki sites that aren't securely  
> > locked, or hidden.
> Furthermore I would be delighted if you, John, would watch your language  
> while posting to pmwiki-users. I also want to point out, that it was Tamara  
> who suggested that you’d be removed from the list. It is true though, that I  
> have backed up her proposal, but I am at a loss what your accusations  
> directed at me are based on.

This kind of language is indeed not welcome here, the PmWiki mailing lists  
have always been a nice place where courteousy is the rule.

This enthousiastic user is a newcomer (to the internet) and may benefit from  
some guidance about the "netiquette". I don't believe there is a need to  
remove him from the list.

To John, there are a couple of things about the form:

1. If you actively participate in the mailing list, you may want to disable  
the mailing list digest, and start receiving single messages. You can set  
this here: http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users .

2. When you start a new "thread" or a new topic unrelated to a previous  
discussion, make sure you start a new, empty e-mail, and don't reply to a  
previous message.

3. When you reply to a message in the same topic, just use the "reply"  
function of your e-mail program.

The reason for these points are the "e-mail threads" which will otherwise  
appear broken in the archives and on peoples' computers. Most e-mail clients  
can order the messages by the thread, and many people use this ordering to  
see which message was a reply to which one. (When one replies, some hidden  
references are included in the message, so the e-mail clients and the  
mailing lists know that it is a reply). If these references are lost (new  
message instead of reply) or wrong (reply instead of a new message), your e- 
mail will not be correctly stored and displayed on other peoples' computers.

Obviously, if you receive the digest instead of individual messages, you  
never have the references of the individual messages to which you reply. So  
you always start a new thread, and this may annoy some users (who may decide  
to ignore the e-mails).

Also, when you receive the digest, you may overlook who said what, and you  
can mistakenly reply to a different person, as you just did. (The lines  
preceded by ">" or just indented to the right are quotations from other  
people, and may be written by a different person than the author of the  
message.)

About the content, there are also some observations:

1. If you have any question about PmWiki, you are welcome to ask it on the  
mailing list.

2. If your idea is excellent and extremely useful but is only marginally  
related to PmWiki - for example, speeding up Apache or using another PHP  
script, another mailing list might be a better place - for example the  
Apache mailing list. However, sometimes it might not be a good place, see  
below.

3. Two dozens excellent ideas are worth half a penny. If you have not yet  
implemented your idea and run some tests to prove that it works as you think  
it does, it might not look very serious, so it may be a bad idea to try to  
impose it on a community of advanced or expert users. If you have done the  
implementation, you have a website, publish an article about it with all  
tests and benchmarks. If it works, you will help other people.

4. If you have done a PmWiki recipe, feel free to publish it in the  
pmwiki.org Cookbook. But see the next one below.

5. If you are not certain that something is safe, or if you just started  
working with servers and PHP, or if you feel you lack some knowledge, or if  
you are not prepared to reply/explain to even less experienced users, it may  
be a good idea to first learn more.

6. Note that the mailing list archives are public and everyone on the  
internet can read them, now and in the future. One more reason to remain  
courteous and civil, and to not claim things that are not true, for example,  
accusing other users of vandalizing wikis.


Note to myself: really off-topic messages in limited numbers should be  
simply ignored.

Petko




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