On 11/14/2012 04:07 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 10:20:13 -0800, rurpy wrote:
I'll skip the issues already addressed by Joshua Landau. >[...] > I don't understand why you suggest counting setup time for the > alternatives to Google Groups, but *don't* consider setup time for Google > Groups. You had to create a Google Account didn't you? You've either put > in your mobile phone number -- and screw those who don't have one -- or > you get badgered every time you sign in. You do sign in don't you? Yes I sign in. And I've never entered my mobile phone number and no I don't get badgered every time (I've not been asked when I logged in several times today and I just tried again to confirm.) I have been asked in the past and just ignore it -- click Save (or whatever the button is) with a blank text box. As was pointed out, a large number of people already have Google accounts. And creating an account at Google is not comparable to researching news readers, downloading and installing software, setting up an account, etc for someone who's never even heard of usenet before. Subscribing to email is easier but it has its own problems (all those email you don't care about, the time delay (I've had to wait over 24 hours for a response for some email lists), what to do when you're traveling, reading some groups via email but others by GG. I've also had problems trying to post through Gmane and then there were Gmane's accessibly problems a few months ago, fixed now but for how long? The OP had already found her way to GG and managed to post. So the incremental cost for her to *continue* using GG is very low. That's in comparision to *changing* to a new posting method. I'm not saying the Google is always easier than an alternative but for a significant number of people it is. But most importantly it is *their* place to say what is easier for them, not yours or mine. [...] > Even if you are right that Google Groups is easier for some users, in my > opinion it is easy in the same way as the Dark Side of the Force. > Quicker, faster, more seductive, but ultimately destructive. Well, that's the best example of FUD I've seen in this thread so far. Congratulations. ;-) >> As for "best", that is clearly a matter of opinion. The very fact that >> someone would killfile an entire class of poster based on a some others' >> posts reeks of intolerance and group-think. > > Intolerance? Yes. But group-think? You believe that people are merely > copying the group's prejudice against Google Groups. Please don't tell me what I believe, especially when you get it wrong. > I don't think they > are. I think that the dislike against GG is group consensus based on the > evidence of our own eyes, not a mere prejudice. The use of Google Groups > is, as far as I can tell, the single most effective predictor of badly > written, badly thought out, badly formatted posts, and a common source of > spam. Again you repeat Chris Angelo's mistake (if it's a mistake). "group's prejudice"? You've presented no evidence that "the group" as a whole or in large part (including many people who seldom if ever post) share your view. Same with "consensus". A consensus of whom? Are you saying there is a consensus among those who dislike GG posts that they dislike GG posts? You say the dislike is "not a mere prejudice" and yet I can't help but wonder where the hard evidence is. I've not seen it posted though I could have easily missed it. All the news/email tools I use make it a little work to see where a post came from -- usually they'll be a button somewhere or a menu item to show the headers and one will scan those for the source. While easy enough it is still (at least for me) much easier to simply skip a post based on the subject/poster or a quick peak at the contents. So I've never had any inclination to look and have no idea how many crap posts come from GG. Yet you claim that a large percentage of this group has made the effort to do that. (Or maybe there is an easier way to check?) However I can easily imagine how some could think they are checking... "Oh man, what a crap post! Let's check the headers. Yup, just as I thought, Google Groups." But of course, our genius doesn't keep any records and the cases where he is wrong don't make as much impression on his memory. Further, he doesn't bother to check the headers on the non-crap posts. Even a junior-high science student could see the problems with this methodology. And how many people actually do even that? Some may find it an offensive suggestion but there is such a thing as group psychology and there are people who follow leaders. (I suspect those people are all of "us" at least some of the time.) Further people tend to be convinced even more easily when they think "everybody knows it". So when a few of the more prolific and respected posters here start talking about "the consensus is...", "deprecated on this list" and make statements like "GG is irredeemably broken" there are people who will accept that info at the posters' word. And when someone challenges the anti-GG claim, the issue get polarized and choosing one side or the other (still without much reliable evidence) becomes an action of support. Finally there is a significant amount of anti-Google sentiment in the world and it can difficult to tell if someone's motivation is purely against obnoxious posts or is also motivated in part by a desire to oppose Google. You yourself I think have publicly criticized Google and even advocated using an alternate search engine, yes? That kind of political decision is something each person should decide for themself and should not be subject to external pressure, at least not here. So your claim that everyone rejecting GG posts is doing so based solely on their own personal experience is not convincing to me. Now none of that proves that GG posts *aren't* largely crap. But I do object to hyping up the claim. And I still question the need to killfile GG posts based on: * My experience that it is not hard to ignore or quickly skip over crap posts and neither are they very numerous so killfiling does not provide much incremental benefit. * Killfiling is detrimental in that it loses the non- crap posts as well. (The OP of this thread is one example and I recall another example a week or two ago as well.) * My belief that is wrong on some deep level to reject people based on statistics for a group they belong to, especially on a list that makes a big point of being inclusive. >[...] > You of course are free to make whatever arrangements to filter spam and > use Google Groups as you like, but you equally must respect other > people's right to control their own inbox by filtering away GG posters. Right. And I've never said anything contrary. I am not promoting GG and am happy to see helpful suggestions on how to access this group by other means. My responses in this and other threads have pretty much been limited to correcting bad or very biased information and while I'm at it, expressing my opinion that killfiling based on a source (and one as widely used as GG) is not a good way to address the problem as expanded on above. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
