In general the various lists focus on the specific topics of the list,
but there are meanderings here and there. Some lists are better than
others. Some of the autox.team.net lists see basically no traffic, like
the Michigan Turn Marshalls, Rallycross, RMVR and Capitol City MG Club
lists. Others lists see well over a thousand messages per month, some
of which are actually pertinent to the purpose of the list. The Spridgets
list got pretty bad, so I started a moderated version of that. But given
the amount of free time I have to work on Team.Net issues, I'm about
300 messages ( a week or two ) behind on those duties.
A few forays into various unrelated topics are usually tolerated, but
continued discussions of non-list stuff tends to be frowned upon. And
oftimes the discussion about unrelated discussion overwhelms the unrelated
discussion itself.
I've tried to get people to use lists like the-local@autox.team.net
[ http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo ] for chatting about non-list
specific stuff, such as the speeding, traffic cops, etc. messages. But
that didn't work very well. I'm sometimes tempted to just add all 12,000+
Team.Net subscribers to that list and start some topic just to see what
happens. I doubt I ever will, though.
The Backfire forum on http://www.team.net/the-local is another place I'd
like to see used as a site for off-topic discussions rather than the many
marque and model specific lists.[1] But using that venue for discussion
requires effort on the part of the user, they have to waggle the mouse a
bit and register for the site.
In truth, a big waste of the limited Team.Net resources comes not
from off topic discussions but from folks that simply refuse to honor
my request to edit their replies, and include portions of the original
message that do not need to be there. Some random, recent examples of
such boorishness taken from this month's archives:
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00022.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00085.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00098.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00099.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00235.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00265.html
Some examples of better netiquette:
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00034.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00077.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00105.html
http://www.team.net/html_arc/triumphs/200403/msg00328.html
Sometimes I do wonder why I even bother, I could be working
on my Triumphs instead of riding herd on all these bits and bytes.
mjb.
1. I wonder how many folks even know the difference between marque and
model as it regards our cars? I wonder how many mispronounce marque?
Do the folks who pronounce it as mar-key also abbreviate, say, 1960
as 60' instead of '60 ?
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