[HPFGU-Movie] Re: Admin-type reminder ahead of Friday

[Richard]

At 01:30 18/11/2005 , Kelley wrote:

<HUGE snip>

First of all, apologies to Kelley and the admin team for perhaps giving the 
impression in what I said before that I might have been criticising the 
team for not being strict with the posts/members on this list. I've just 
re-read what I wrote and must admit that such a reading was possible. 
However, I want to make it absolutely clear that this was NOT my intent in 
any way, shape or form.

I am well aware that the team has more than enough work looking after the 
other, much busier lists, and the few posts on this list for 51 weeks of 
the year don't warrant a heavy-handed approach. It is precisely because I 
wanted to AVOID it that I felt it appropriate for the plea for sticking to 
the list's conventions (I much prefer that word to "rules", because we 
really are talking about common-sense conventions which exist for valid and 
fairly obvious reasons rather than being rules imposed from "on high") to 
come as a gentle reminder from a poster whom many people here might 
recognise rather than be some kind of order from the admin team. The List 
Elves do a terrific job and I never thought it necessary to make a big 
song-and-dance about this issue.

Sorry for any possible embarrassment.

>A big thing we noticed (and it continues) is that so many people
>top-post (happens on all the groups, though main is the only place
>we have been strictly enforcing the rule against).  The elves
>grumbled about it amongst themselves (along with grumbles about
>lack of snipping, lack of capitalization, lack of attribution,
>lack of sigs, etc., etc., etc.).  But, one thing was different --
>we weren't hearing the usual complaints from listies that we'd
>always heard before.

My own view on the matter (and the reason why I've not contacted the Admins 
about this) is that whilst I care for people sticking to the established 
conventions (quite simply because it makes life *reading* the list so much 
easier!), for most of the time it really isn't a big issue on this list 
because there are so few posts, and long threads are rare. One of the 
reasons I gave up the Main and OT lists some years ago was because 
flaunting the conventions was rife and keeping up with the lists had simply 
become impossible.

On this list, top-posting, lack of trimming, etc, are manageable - both to 
people like me who get individual messages delivered by email as well as 
people reading the digest (not to mention people using the web interface).

However, within the next 24 hours and for the next week or so, traffic on 
this list is going to explode (if the movie releases to date are any 
indication) and so, for that time, people sticking to the conventions (most 
of which are geared to keeping posts as short as possible) becomes an 
issue. In a couple of weeks' time, this will, again, no longer be so 
important, even if the odd post might irritate me on technical grounds.

I would submit that more of the old hands probably feel the way I do, and 
this is the reason why the admin team hasn't been troubled by a flood of 
complaints about various posts/posters.

Thankfully, the members of this list generally do a pretty good job of 
self-moderation and the odd gentle nudge is enough to correct any minor 
deviations. My only concern is that a lot of people will turn up here out 
of the blue over the course of the next few days and not see this thread 
but there's not a lot we can do about that anyway, regardless of whether 
it's gentle reminders or heavy-handed orders. :-) I do hope, however, that 
those who *have* read this thread will create examples for the others to 
follow, even if their first posts might not be quite up to scratch.

BTW Kelley: be prepared to hear from me by the end of the day about setting 
up some new items in the polls section, and perhaps to close some old ones 
(I'm sure I shall think of at least one original one). :-)

--
Richard, previously AKA GulPlum, a bit cheesed off that there are no 
midnight screenings around here. :-(