dear list, a nice cup of coffee in front of me, and as a big fan of robert x., let me reflect a bit on the phenomenon called "misc@openbsd.org"... will try to keep it short.
a couple of days ago, there was a quite big thread about optimized kernel builds. the caller had a point (all of us do, no matter how insignificant) but some of the answers were rude, childish and much more trollish than the actual post itself. that thread made me quite disgusted of misc@, the way people treat each other here. i am a teacher. i have a degree in "teaching computer science". when you learn to be a teacher, you must sign up to basic psychology classes. obviously. teachers are role models. obviously. i don't teach at the moment, and i am not sure i will. i have found the fact that some of the kids will form habits, opinions, god-knows-what-else based on my personality quite scary and too big a responsibility. for now anyway. but i am also what some might call nerd/geek (blech) and am very familiar with the social implications of that. what people here mostly fail to realize is, how impersonal the internet really is. 99% of you don't know how old i am, how do i look like, what's my life like. same is true from my side towards you. <thesis> my point is, that you could be affecting(flaming) a developing personality, a 13 year old kid who just happens to be very intelligent, just installed the system and hurries off to the mailing list to satisfy his knowledge hunger without realizing all the mailing list nuances we see everyday (top posting, long signatures, not reading the documentation beforehand, posting the "taboo" questions). you just never know. (well, except darren reed ;-) </thesis> it's all about experience. there is a baby born every second, and no one was born wise. everyone who uses email for more than 5 years knows just how elusive this form of communication is. how easy it is to misunderstand, misinterpret even a clearly worded email. <advice> 1. if a mail makes you angry, never respond rightaway. in the best case, sleep on it. in the worst case, go do something else, come back in an hour, read it again carefully and then respond. 2. if a mail makes you angry, in 85% of all cases, you should just delete it, and forget about it. i am quite amazed how hard it is for people to ignore stuff. you must exercise your ignore muscle. saves awful lot of time and energy. (i know, this mail is the opposite of this advice, but i slept on it ;-) 3. never assume that you are writing to an intelligent adult person. 4. remember that email is archived and one day you might read what you wrote years ago. you know, shame and stuff. 5. a whole planet could be reading what you wrote. you represent your family, upbringing, country, etc, and last but not least yourself. 6. chill out and relax. as one of my taglines say: "good words cost no more than bad." </advice> peace, -f ps. musical background for this mail provided by two lone swordsman and arovane -- en taro adun
