Re: Outages, Snipping & Other Miscellany

[jeremy@xxxxxxxxx (Jeremy H. Griffith)]

On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 13:30:43 -0500, Paul Schulte <paul.k.schulte@medtronic.com>
wrote:

>I'd like to ask -- does Free Framers wish to plan anything of the sort in
>competition? Or with a different focus? I ask because I lead the Upper
>Midwest FrameMaker Users Network (UM-FUN) and want my user members to know
>of all the possible options for FrameMaker training, support, camaraderie,
>etc.

I tend to think of us as the BBC or PBS of the FrameMaker's user
community.  No commercials, not even the PBS "sponsorships";
maybe CU would be another model.  But certainly plenty of reviews,
announcements, product listings, and tech support aids.  This is,
as I keep saying, a *participatory* democracy.  If there is a
task you want done, don't wait for "somebody" to do it, start
it already!  There's no "competition" here, only the desire to
provide the services that we need to each other...

>> You *did* make one cross-post, with no subject line, on Wed 10/14; it
>>appeared here one minute later, and on Brad's list two days later.
>
>Unfortunately I've already zapped "Brad's" digests from that time period,
>so I can't completely verify this in the digest form. I have seen
>cross-posts show up much faster generally in "Brad's" digest. 

That's almost impossible to tell with digests, the reason being that
they will never, except by the wildest of coincidence, cover the same
span of time and messages.  The system ships them out at 20K chars
(before trim), or 24 hours after the first message in it, whichever 
comes first.  You can see how the presence of the same message in
both is almost meaningless in terms of timing.

>And now I know one reason for such delay: (snip)
>
>> [Note from Jeremy:  Lots of juicy full quotes gobbled this time.
>>Yum yum.  Try to be considerate of our friends who pay per-minute,
>>everybody, please, and trim them yourselves...]

Actually, the max delay from this is an hour or two; the task itself
has yet to take more than ten minutes, usually less.  BTW, if anyone
else is yearning to do such cleanup, and is always on line too, let
me know and I'll pass the job on...  <bg>

>Good advice too frequently forgotten or ignored. But before one gets too
>harsh on this matter, one must remember that many users of email have no
>idea of the complexities involved. Users will learn to do a task one way
>and assume that this is the only way the task can be done. And way too many
>of these users haven't a clue about different email programs and protocols.
>(Don't get me started here -- I would advocate many people shouldn't be
>allowed to touch a computer without more training, much more training.)
>While many IS/IT types also preach Jeremy's advice, even they too often
>mess up and fail to follow it.

Too true.  I have friends who consistently sent their short comments,
a line or two, on top of 300-line news posts I sent a personal list.
I've asked them not to, but my words fall on deaf ears.  <sigh>

>And we must commend Jeremy for doing this hand-work. It's never ending,
>because new users come on-line every day. I know I don't have the patience
>to perform this kind of task so enthusiastically.

It probably comes to less than an hour a day, all told.  And I follow
up on bounces with the sysadmins of the sites affected...  But thank
you for noticing!

>This brings me back to a request I've made, and which in light of Jeremy's
>hand editing, seems even more reasonable: Adding a TOC to the digest.

I know!  The config file tells it to, and it is an official feature
of this release of majordomo.  It just doesn't work.  I'll continue
trying to fix it...  BTW, the individual "unsub" footers are also
supposed to be removed from the digest automatically; that's not
working either... and what got me started doing manual cleanup is
that the autosending is broken too, and bounces the digest to me...

>I have been giving this new list the benefit of the doubt and will continue
>to do so for quite a while as start-ups take some time to establish
>patterns. Let's try to turn this "Free Framers" into the higher-end list
>that many envisage.

Yes indeed!  It is entirely in our own hands to make of it what we
want.  **All** of our own hands, certainly not just mine!

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  (jeremy@omsys.com)  http://www.omsys.com/

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