John Bartow
john at winhaven.net
Thu Mar 26 09:28:36 CDT 2009
Hi all, I've been browsing the threads on the above stated issues, all of which have been concerns throughout the past few years. My thoughts - which are consistent with past discussions in the Database Advisors, Inc. board of directors (BoD) meetings: Forum vs. List: I am a list person, I am involved in dozens of forums but rarely have time to check them. I am involved in many more lists and I browse through them all almost daily. I may not have to respond but I do browse them to keep up on what's happening on each. So, IMO we will not be abandoning the list format for at least another year ;o) That said, we have been investigating the newer technologies available that allow for both seamlessly. There are a couple of open source applications that show some promise but we haven't gone as far as testing them yet. (Our lists are run on open source software.) If we find a forum/list combination that works I doubt there will be any reason not to move to it. I'm confident from our past discussions here and on other lists that our membership would financially support a "best of both worlds" solution. It would take some time and dedication on the part of a few individuals to make a transition to anything other than what we are presently utilizing so this would be a concern. Bottom posting: Sorry, as much as I like it, let's get real, it isn't going to happen until someone comes up with a method which makes this easy to implement in MS's mail products. Snipping: Just take the time to snip. It gives you a few more seconds to think before typing a reply and gives some of us time to cool off and not reply at all ;o) Signature blocks: Thanks to you that don't include these monstrosities. We've discussed this topic ad-infinitum in the past. There's not much we can do about it. Off topic threads: I think we are quite lenient with these. If everyone would follow the above conduct they would be less of a concern. We created a separate list "dba-OT" just for those that want to chit-chat about politics, stupid people tricks and life in general. Everyone's invited to post comments there. DBA-OT is NOT archived at all so your comments are as temporary as email can be. (You all know "they" are watching us anyway ;o) We have a number of OTer's that aren't even on the other lists anymore. They've moved on to other things in their lives or retired but stay on as OTers because it's like a little family over there, quite a dysfunctional little family but family no less :-P I encourage everyone on AccessD to sign up for every list - just set a few email handling rules to have the messages placed into separate folders. Then when you feel the need to ask about SQL server, VB or any of its cousins, VM, Blue Ray, audio cards security issues and other "technical things", or the latest celebrity gossip you can post it directly to "DBA-SQLServer", "DBA-VB", "DBA-Tech" or "DBA-OT" rather than AccessD. If everyone did this we would all have cleaner lists, archives and still have the same expectations of great responses. Why are the last three items a concern?: We essentially have to pay to store our archives and we have no method to remove all of this junk from the stored messages. This is why we promote snipping, no sigs, etc This is why we reduced the size limit of the messages to all lists (we have 15 lists, some for corporate use only but at least 5 public lists with large archives). I essentially copy and pasted the largest chuck of code, with explanations included and some discussion about the code, into a text message and checked the size. It didn't exceed the limit. In fact, I wanted to reduce the size limit even more but we have some very understanding, kind folk on the BoD :o) The moderators have all been advised of these issues and will allow any relevant posting to go through even if it exceeds the size limit. The key is to send plain text and if you post something that is extremely long, send a message to one of the moderators (or to me) that it is relevant and please allow it to go through. We will. We have the best list master and volunteer moderators I have ever been involved with. If I could, I would buy them all a steak dinner at the most exclusive restaurant in Winneconne, WI. for their great efforts. If someone can come up with code that will go through our archives and eliminate all (or even some of) the junk mentioned above that would be great. It would reduce the size of the archives AND make searching the archives much easier and give better results. If you just try to imagine what the search turns up when no one snips out the previous parts of a thread you can see why this is an issue. You may be searching for a problem that has one thread but 90 responses with small talk in it and one good solution. A bit frustrating because the search function will turn up all 90 responses. Feel free to contact me anytime about concerns you have with any of the DBA lists. John Bartow, President Database Advisors, Inc. Email: mailto:president at databaseadvisors.com Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com