more chuqui grumpies: telling me to do it your way.

as long as I’m being grumpy, let me grump about another thing that drives me crazy…

Today, a member of a list I’m on posted this, aimed at me:

> Excuse the shouting, but I have made this request repeatedly, first
> in message footers, then at the beginning, and yet it seems to be roundly
> ignored. I do not need to get two copies of every message sent to this
> list in response to mine: the one delivered to the list will suffice.

Yes, he was being roundly ignored. The thread developed into a bit of a discussion over it, and while I’d originally planned on letting it drop, I finally chirped… As long as I’m chirping, I might as well throw it out to annoy everyone….

You know, I was going to let this drop, since I didn’t want to turn it into an argument, but since it is anyway, I’ll chime in:

He can ask. he can’t demand. Since philosophically I’m strongly against the request he made, I ignore it. Just because he asks for it doesn’t mean he gets it, and since I’m in control of my email client (not him), all he can do is ask. And asking in ever louder and more frustrated voices doesn’t help him get what he wants, something he should realize by now (at least with me… grin)

That is why I suggested the PROPER way to do this is to fix it on his own local system, since he does have control of it. If you want your email some specific way, set up your system to present it that way. Don’t whine at everyone else to change their lives to your convenience — fix your computer.

Not only is that more effective, because your computer HAS to listen to you and I don’t, it’s a lot lower on the frustration level, because as rich has to remember from the early days of USENET, educating users DOESN’T FRICKING WORK because every time you educate one, two more pop up who are new and even less capable of understanding why they need to be educated, much less care about what you think. So this “do it my way” strategy is guaranteed to fail anyway, and by trying, you’re wasting your own time and energy, and raising your blood pressure at the same time. That’s a stupid way to handle something.

Find a way to solve it, not complain about it. And that means doing it using things you CAN control, and that doesn’t include the users around you.

here’s why, by the way. I filter all of my list mail to folders, which I can read in my free time, so it doesn’t get in the way of my “real” e-mail. If I’m in a conversation (like this one), I WANT a private copy, because it flags to me that a conversation I’m in needs to be looked at. That keeps the threads I’m involved in directly moving forward on a timely basis, without requiring me to plow through all of my list mail wondering if a discussion I’m involved in needs my attention. That’s good for the list (IMHO) because it keeps discussions from going stale for six hours and then picking up again.

But if someone doesn’t send me a private copy, I don’t yell at them. Things might slow down a bit, but the world won’t end, either.

(why do people, in a large, complex environment like the internet, seem to think the answer to their problems it to tell everyone else to do it the way they want? if you want something done a specific way, teach your own system to do it for you…..)

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