[ale] Fwd: Georgia Bill Would Prohibit Subsidies For Municpal Broadband - Slashdot

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 02:59:20PM -0500, Geoffrey Myers wrote:
> I would hope we would be a welcoming organization.  These kind of
> comments just aren't necessary.

I, for one, am not "unwelcoming".  Not particularly, anyway.

I've raised some of the same points in the past, and I realized that
really, the "culture" here was established before I came.  It hasn't
really changed, though I have---I have learned to ignore that which I
don't really care about, and have fun with the rest.  :-)

If someone joins the group and expects to be able to change the
culture, it's simply not going to happen.  ALE is quite established,
and insofar as I can determine, nearly every topical mailing list I
have ever been on has a different culture speaking to what is
(generally) permitted or rejected.  Those who don't like it (unless
they happen to be in the majority) really only have two options:
filter it out or jump ship.

I'd encourage everyone to filter out what they dislike, as with any
other community.  But in this day and age, people have forgotten that
some of the following things exist, let alone how to do them:

 - Filtering on subject lines.  Gmail allows this, and any IMAP server
   that uses Sieve allows for this as well.  If the server doesn't
   allow for it for some reason, client-side filtering rules are
   acceptable.

 - KFs (kill files).  In today's environment this typically means that
   one is filtering things from a single recipient to the Trash bin.

 - Filtering on keywords in the body.  If someone does not want to see
   any sort of post from ALE that contains one of any number of words
   (for example, someone who likes Aaron but wishes to filter out some
   of the mails that he sends which are politically charged ;-)), that
   is possible to do as well.  This mostly (AIUI) requires client-side
   filtering rules, or things like Sieve or procmail to do.

All that said, if someone still wants to leave (maybe they don't wish
to be bothered with filtering things, or whatever), they're welcome to
do so.  While I wouldn't say I am particularly "unwelcoming", I
wouldn't say that I lie particularly far on the other side of the
line, either.

      --- Mike