[Am-info] One take on Geoffrey's post...

[John Bryan]

On Friday, August 29, 2003, at 03:42 AM, Jeff Wasel wrote:

>
> Hi All,
>
> If we stuck to the precise criteria that Jamie had in mind when he set 
> up
> the list, then yes, perhaps the list is past its prime. However, I have
> always enjoyed the randomness of the threads, the level of discourse, 
> and
> the friends I've made here which, at least in my opinion, trumps all 
> that is
> "official" about am-info.

It used to really bug the heck out of me when Fred's postings became so 
constant and numerous, especially the ones that were only URLs, and 
even more especially on things that I had already read.

For some time I filtered them off to a folder called "Fred" under my 
AM-Info folder, but then that, too, became intolerable for me, and now 
I am tossing what wheat there may be with the chaff, and am saddened to 
report that for some time now they ALL go to 'delete', not Trash, but 
'delete'.  I don't even want to see them.  I swear the guy must have a 
LOT of energy or have written some scripts to do the forwarding 
automatically, they are so numerous.  Sorry, Fred, they just got to be 
too much for me.

I can understand the behavior perhaps.  When I first discovered the 
original Mac EvangeList run by Guy Kawasaki, I became an ardent 
promoter of the things I learned about there, and would send them to a 
group of friends.  Then I heard that I was being referred to as "the 
spammer", and I knocked it off.  Even so, sometimes I can't resist 
forwarding an article to my brother and sister, but they are family and 
can't get away. ;-)

I am now a much more peaceable, contented subscriber to this list.  Low 
traffic or not.  It's a breath of fresh air to have that.

I'm remembering something someone said, "It's not that it takes all 
kinds, just that there ARE all kinds.".

Agreed that even if everyone filtered Fred's posts to /dev/null, they 
would still have to be downloading them, storing them on who knows how 
many mail servers, and in that respect it is a waste of diskspace, cpu 
cycles, and bandwidth.

The list has seen a lot of folks come through, and I imagine some old 
timers have remained silently subscribed, as I have.  The flavor of the 
list has changed over the years to be sure.  However, I feel that it's 
original purpose as a discussion about the first Appraising Microsoft 
conference, still has relevance.  Certainly not wrt the conference 
itself per se, but definitely wrt Appraising Microsoft.   I don't know 
of any other list like this, with the quality of folks and content that 
this list has, and with such a topic.

I personally don't contribute a lot, as I feel a bit out of my league 
with some of you other folks, but occasionally I pitch in my two cents.

j b