Hi Isaac,<br>
<br>
It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.<br>
<br>
People will be joining this list all the time. Your project is
successful, and I believe that it will become more so, especially as
Digital Restrictions Management continues to infect already-deployed consumer devices (like my TiVo).<br>
<br>
People tend to use services like Gmail, which promote
top-posting. Banning Gmail users will likely greatly reduce the
value your service provides, but it's your call to make.<br>
<br>
My introduction to this list was to receive a complaint[1], and a
complaint which not only was missing information (as in, the <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">reasons
</span>for the complaint!), but within a few hours of joining the -dev list, I
saw a post by someone stating <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">twice </span>that
the responder had removed information from the email which would have
aided understanding. Thus my opinion began forming. (Yours
has likely been forming since some time in 2002 when you started this
list; you have more data than me to base your opinion on.)<br>
<br>
Your figures show around 50 GB per month being sent out. Are you paying extra
for that? I already stated that I will gladly contribute towards
your mailing list overage costs. (And it truly is <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">gladly</span></span>: by learning your system, I will save myself $13 a month once I can abandon the TiVo.)
<br>
<br>
You gave a good example of unreadable text. I gave two examples
of
emails for which the efficiency of communication would have been
improved if
the information that was in the previous email had been preserved (the
initial email I responded to, and one from the -dev list).<br>
<br>Banning someone's input and/or questions simply because of the format
of their communications (or the domain that they are on!) seems very religious [2] to me, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 153);">especially when
the issue is not mentioned at all on the mailing list signup
page.</span> Chad's response said that the list will "probably very
quickly" let me know which form it prefers (and it has!), so it makes sense that text
describing this preference should be on the mailing list signup page,
which would eliminate the bandwidth taken up by most if not all of this thread.<br>
<br>
I'm new here, so perhaps I should be lurking rather than saying so much on my first
day. I want to help, and I want to understand, which is why I
sent my first email (and to demonstrate the point that people [removing
information from emails] had already [removed enough information] from the
thread which was about [removing information from emails], that I had to ask for
clarification).<br>
<br>
If you give me your PayPal account, I'll send $20. And, I will
strive to contribute to more fruitful threads in the future, and will
say no more on this topic unless questioned.<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
Ken Beal<br>
<br>
PS Please note that I had <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">never</span></span> been asked not to top-post (you stated "people have been asked _many_ times to not do it"). I will attempt to
conform in the future, and again I apologize if my (previous and
current) communications were taken negatively, because I do not intend
to display any negativity. I think MythTV is an excellent project
and I want to financially (and otherwise, including preferred communication methods [3]) support its creator.<br>
<br>
[1] I requested to join the list at 5:00 pm. I replied to the
auto-response at 6:18 pm, and it responded to me during the same
minute. Also at 6:18 pm there was an email with subject "Jump
ahead problem w/ .19", and then at 6:20 pm I received the email from
Isaac stating that he could easily ban the Gmail domain. So when
I say "introduction" it wasn't the <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">first </span>email, but it was among the first that I read when I came back to Gmail, around 6:30 pm. (I'm in EST.)<br>
<br>
[2] That is, "control for the sake of control"; as opposed to spirituality, which tends to be enlightening.<br>
<br>
[3] But I won't know what they are without asking or being told, hence this discussion[4].<br>
<br>
[4] Terry Pratchett would be proud. Or amused. Or not.<br>
<br>