Farewell and thanks!

[Jerome H. Fine]

 >Mouse wrote:

>>>I've finally had my fill of the general grumpiness and bluntly
>>>worded interactions on this list.
>>>      
>>>
>>Sorry to hear that.
>>
>What linimon@ said.
>
>>I fight against such things on other lists I am on, but some weeks I
>>also wonder why.
>>
>I just now noticed something.
>
>I've noticed people mentioning instances of, shall we say, "excessive
>bluntness" occasionally here.  But, significantly more often than not,
>I never saw the, er, "excessively blunt" message itself.
>
>Usually, as in this case, this turns out to be because (for unrelated
>reasons) I go to some lengths to avoid seeing anything that was sent
>through gmail, even laundered through mailing lists.  (This loses me
>some mail I regret losing, but, so far, not enough to make me take out
>those blocks.  And note that it's not people using gmail addresses I
>block, but mail actually sent through gmail.)
>
>I'm wondering if perhaps this correlation works well enough for other
>people that dropping list mail sent through gmail could help preserve
>the S/N ratio of the list for those who find it low enough that
>dropping off the list entirely is looking attractive.
>
>(_Why_ that test correlates that way for me is an interesting, but only
>tangentially related, question.)
>
In my case it might be that my focus is so narrow that I don't really
care about or react to all the "excessive bluntness" that is now seen
very rarely after the last bad batch was shut down by Jay.

In general, I find that the "DELETE" key to be the best solution since
it takes only a second for topics I don't care about at all and only a
dozen seconds for posts that I find unhelpful.

And since I receive so much help for the very few things that I really
need like help for a new system, it is really very reasonable to spend
the few minutes each day to sift out the chaff (at least what I regard
as chaff - not at all identical for anyone else of course) from the good
stuff.

I rarely reply to this sort of speculation, but I regard Mouse's opinions
quite highly, in addition to Tony Duell whom I regard the most.

Jerome Fine