I apologize for the ambiguity in the message that started this whole thing, and I agree that it is ironic that it was missing context. I also apologize for such a personal and negative message, but please allow me explain. The reason I responded so negatively to you was that I read and re-read the message that started this whole thing several things and I honestly couldn't see how someone that read the whole thing could interpret it the way you did. (It talked about forum-specific buttons and functions, for example.) It appeared to me that you didn't read the whole message and were attacking me without reason. In retrospect, messages that negative never seem to do anything but tick people off, so what can I say. I'm human.
The other ironic thing is that I DO have the ability to just send messages to the forum, but allowed this message to go to the list because I thought that the list would appreciate seeing the effort I was making at helping to make things flow better. So there is no "problem with intra-site communication." I also never said that backup central or this forum/mailing list goes unattended for weeks (or even days) at a time. I'm on it all day every day. What I said was that I didn't see that this particular thread had responses to it, as I wasn't looking for them. (Stickies don't typically get responses.) I'm on the site every single day even when I'm on vacation, as I'm that big of a geek, and I have help that I can call on when I need it. AND my email address goes out in every single message that goes from the forum to the list, and anyone contacting me via that address would reach my BlackBerry immediately. So I don't believe that I'm being irresponsible. As to the whole "commercial site" thing and whether or not I'm doing something that nobody wants here, I remind you that this topic has come up a few times over the last two years that I've been doing this, and the overall opinion (with a few exceptions from people like yourself) was that as long as I was adding value and not sending spam, then it would be OK. Every once in a while there is a message that sets off the debate again, and when it does I remind people of WHY I'm doing this and the value that it is bringing. Toward that end I did some queries of the posts from the last six months. Of the 2510 posts to this mailing list, 168 of them came from the forum (~6%). I then took a look at who was posting and can see that of those 168 posts, 131 of them were from 10 people. This shows me that while there are a few "one-time posters," the bulk of messages coming from the forum are from people that are actively involved with the community. This also shows me that some active participants of this community prefer the forum interface (some of which are IBM employees, BTW). I believe these voices would be silent if we severed the link. AND I believe there are more like them out there that find my site every day. In addition, no spam hit the list during that time, due to the system I put in place and the care that I have taken. I do respect the right of people on this list to do what they want, but in the absence of a dictator (list admin) telling me to just get the heck off, I've been going with a consensus -- and the consensus seems to be that as long as I'm adding value and not spam, that the link should stay. If anyone else would like to discuss this further, I suggest we do it off-list. There's already been enough messages on this topic. My email address is cur...@backupcentral.com I apologize again for any inconvenience.
