About informing others of the list guidelines [was: karl-desktop]

[Ari Torhamo]

For some, who represent a vocal and, I believe, a very small minority
(is there really more than one), there seems to be something wrong with
having a few useful guidelines for posting to mailing lists and having
more experienced users informing less experienced about them. I've been
subscribed to this list almost from the beginning, and this has
generally worked very well here. If you start a new thread for every
message you send on a subject, you are told, hopefully in a friendly
manner, how this makes following the conversation more difficult for
others. If you 'hijack' an existing thread, you are told what problems
that brings. Even the somewhat controversial request to avoid
top-posting has been mostly well received - it's been debated a few
times strongly, but people haven't been really attacking each other. 

People generally seem to appreciate to be able to learn efficient ways
to work together. I myself am grateful for the lessons I have received
here for effective communication. When I came to this list, I always top
posted, wrote uninformative subject lines for my messages, was
unspecific when I described a problem, I may have even... ehem... sent
in an HTML message or two, and so on :-) I thank those who took the time
to tell me a better way. This matter also isn't in anyway specific to
mailing lists. It's the same everywhere where we co-operate - bug
reporting, forums, developer environments, etc.

All this makes me wonder, what is it really that makes some few people
to have an issue with this. Is it a pursuit of the idea of ultimate
personal freedom? I think that when one is a cranky
I-do-as-I-like-and-listen-to-nobody (and wants others to be that way
too), the freedom has not been found.


Regards,

Ari Torhamo