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Subject: 
Re: Crossposting FAQ, why, when and how to crosspost
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Thu, 14 Mar 2002 02:09:37 GMT
Viewed: 
246 times
  
In lugnet.faq, Cary Clark writes:
In lugnet.faq, Larry Pieniazek writes:
...
I'd say that entry misses most of the gist. The title doesn't even have
"Crosspost" in it,

Intentionally. The title is 'how do I post to multiple groups' instead of
'how do I crosspost' because it assumes that the reader doesn't know what
crossposting is.

Well since my post was trying to explain a number of terms, including
crossposting, taking the term out of the title pretty much undercuts that.

and it spends zero time on the wrong way to do it or why
that way is wrong. Nor does it talk about why spamming many groups is
considered bad, nor does it talk about why spamming non market groups is bad
either.

The FAQ is not a moral compendium.

Maybe it should be, just a bit. If there is a behaviour that EVERYONE agrees
is wrong (for example posting identical posts to multiple groups without
crossposting) then why not explain why it is wrong in a place where newbies
can get some education without it taking a lot of repeated manual effort to
explain each time it comes up? Which it does a fair bit.

You may fault me for the way I worded the original suggested FAQ entry if
you like, although I think it's pretty mild, it might be possible to make it
milder, and I would be happy to see revisions to it in terms of wording and
approach, but I guess I do not agree with your fundamental principle here
and would like to see this discussed in more depth. What do others think?

You know, if I did some multiple cut-n-paste posting and subsequently
learned that it was bad, I'd feel bad. And stupid. Even if it was an newbie
honest mistake.

That's OK. It's GOOD to feel bad about doing something if you shouldn't have
done it. That's how you learn in a lasting way. No consequence, no change in
behaviour.

Further, there is nothing wrong with feeling stupid per se as long as it's
clear that everyone makes stupid mistakes once in a while, and that there is
no lasting harm done if one resolves not to make the same ones over again.
Hiding the fact that something is "bad" is hiding the consequences of one's
actions.

Or are you saying everyone's equal in every way and no one should ever say
that anything anyone else ever does is inappropriate?

For LUGNET to be the friendliest place on the net, the friendliness has to
start in highly visible places.

One can be friendly and still guide. The FAQ ought to be friendly in tone
when one reads it and further, in areas where it can, it ought to achieve
the metagoal of making the reader friendlier to others when the reader has
finished understanding the answers to the questions he sought. friendly !=
value neutral

Or is your vision for the FAQ that it not give any guidance about community
norms at all? Would you rather it said, in effect, "well here's how to
crosspost, go ahead and spam the non market groups because to tell you not
to do that is to *take a position* on what is allowed and what is not
allowed, anbd heaven forbid we actually give any good advice about what to do"??

What do others think?

posted to admin.general only as this is a meta issue. Not asking for admin
intervention, just moving the discussion somewhere out of the way of the
less controversial FAQ answer generation and harvesting process.



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Crossposting FAQ, why, when and how to crosspost
 
(sent back to lugnet.faq, since I'm dealing only with micro-issues, not meta ones) (...) The title has the word 'crossposting' in it now. ... I also added a paragraph discouraging cut-n-paste. (23 years ago, 14-Mar-02, to lugnet.faq)
  Re: Crossposting FAQ, why, when and how to crosspost
 
(...) I think your FAQ draft is very nicely done. But do you think anybody will read it? After some years of experience with various "message boards", I don't think most people read FAQs. I think they learn by doing (wrong). I also think that people (...) (23 years ago, 15-Mar-02, to lugnet.admin.general)

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