No more "me too" posts.

[Bart Silverstrim]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> No, it doesn't, but when you go to a list with people who help others
>> and say your glablabber isn't installing with an error about the
>> libtibbop and thirty others start "me to-ing" and "This happened to me
>> over quinty months ago", then you generally have an idea that
>> a) you're not alone
>> b) others have tried, and apparently failed, to solve the issue
>> c) you're probably kinda screwed.
>>
>> And sometimes it's best not to be left wondering.
>>
> 
> So when someone else couldn't fix the problem, that means that I
> should just give up because there is no fix?

Where did I say that?

A guy asks for help. No on helps.

A week later someone else does the same. Nothing.

More users adopt XYZ and come out, only now you get a request for help, 
and three or four others say they see it too...and others from before 
say they've had the trouble for awhile.

Feel free to jump in and help if you can, because at this point, you 
didn't for the other two guys.

This is just one scenario, of course,...

>> What's useful is what's often used in reviews and board forums; a way to
>> simply have "26 others found this useful", or something of that
>> nature...a rating system.
>>
> 
> Not on a mailing list.

See below...

>> I don't think he's saying that others should get help only if it's
>> widespread...I think it sounds like he's saying it's a forum for someone
>> to see it and say "we've got thirty people with XYZ issue so it should
>> be a priority," even though I don't know how many, if any, developers
>> are actually paying attention to these forums.
>>
>> But it probably makes the end user feel a *little* better about their
>> situation and/or signal that maybe they need to consider moving on to
>> try some other hardware/software, or a different OS, depending on
>> severity or irritation level.
>>
> 
> I would feel a 'little' better if the two helpful posts were not
> buried in 17 me-too posts when I have to STFA. Or do people not do
> that anymore?

Yeah...new users are so familiar with the archives. That's why we have 
the periodic netiquette reminders, personal peeve on formatting flares, 
etc. etc...

You expect new users and infrequent users to know about the archives or 
even google...which they normally don't, judging from the frequent 
bitching about them not doing it...yet state that "not on a mailing 
list" can we have a rating system to eliminate "me-too's", even though I 
was saying it would be handy to have something like that, not that it's 
possible on a mailing list.

I'm not that stupid. I was saying a system like that would be needed to 
get rid of me-too's, not that it could be done. Like so many other 
things about SMTP, it's yet another feature that can't be implemented...