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On Wed, 4 Jun 2003 15:25:45 -0400, "Amber Young"
<ayoung -at- pridemobility -dot- com> wrote:
>These have been the most horrible four days of my professional life on
>account of your list and its members making me feel like the biggest loser
>on the planet. Never in my life have I encountered more insensitive,
>nitpicking, humorless people in one place. Please take me off the list.
I originally sent this off-list, but after reading some of the
responses I thought I'd post it here too.
Amber:
We are indeed a caustic, vicious and unforgiving bunch. It's probably
because many of us have been doing this for a long time.
Those of us who are most highly opinionated are also the most
experienced (and the most bitter) so you will find a wealth of
information here.
This is a very idiosyncratic list. It is also a very high volume one.
Eric's rules are tough because the list is intended as an information
exchange. He has taken me to task a number of times.
One of the basic things to remember is that you should go to the
archives at Eric's site and search for the answer to a question before
posting it. Very often you will find it has already been answered.
There are also plenty of reference resources. If you are interested I
will be happy to send you a list of excellent links for MSWord and
FrameMaker.
The high volume of the list (I think it's well over a hundred messages
per day) makes most of the members a little testy about contentless
messages. Unlike other lists you don't see many "me too" or "hi there"
messages. Some of us read the list in the newsgroup, but others
subscribe and get each posting to the group as an individual message.
If you work in a corporate environment and receive hundreds of
internal email messages, a chatty message like yours can seem like a
kind of spam.
Don't take Eric's warning too much to heart. He's trying to protect
the integrity of the list for all of us.
Read the rules, use the archive, lurk for a while and get used to
dealing with us grumpy old farts.
But don't just leave. You can get a great education here.
-Doc
David W Lettvin
The VerText Company
South Hamilton, MA
+1.978.609.1165
----------------------------------------------------------
"I never run when it starts raining. I just keep to my same leisurely
pace and try to walk between the drops. You get about equally wet
either way, but if you run you look stupid. If you walk you just look
crazy. There's more dignity in crazy, and it's also less strenuous."
- Kinky Friedman
-Doc
David W Lettvin
The VerText Company
South Hamilton, MA
+1.978.609.1165
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