OT OT OT OT OT

[treed2@u.washington.edu (T. Reed)]

I haven't been here as long as many of you (only about 2.5 years), but I
do agree that the list has changed.. there is a lot more socializing and
non-vw discussion.. perhaps the average car know-how of the group has
gone down slightly.

Personally, it doesn't bother me a bit. I only read the threads I'm
interested in (due to time constraints) and my mail software
automatically sorts all e-mail from the scirocco list in to a seperate
incoming folder. Even if the list were all tech there would still be
threads about things like mk1 drum brakes that don't interest me at all so
I would skip them.

I suppose if a large number of people objected to how the list is now, we
could set up two seperate lists i.e. scirocco-l-tech and scirocco-l-talk
and instruct people to direct friendly discussion to the talk list and vw
stuff to the tech list. Then people who only wanted the tech stuff could
unsubscribe from the talk, and vice versa. Or people like me who find both
types valuable could remain subscribed to both.

The problem with this approach is that inevitably people (such as new
listers) would send things to the wrong list and each time an angry thread
of "post it to the talk list, not here" would ensue.

Not to mention that many threads involve both tech stuff -and- friendly
chat. You couldn't send messages to both lists because then the people
subscribed to both lists would get two copies..

Anyway.. my suggestion for now is to live with it. We all have to throw
away the "Life and Arts" section of the newspaper even though we never
read it. Every day some idiot comes up and starts yapping about their day
and how much they don't like somebody. We don't care, so we just tune them
out. Do the same with the messages you don't care about on the list.

Myself, I never actually delete any messages because they can be useful
later. I have my own list archive consisting of about 200 mb of list
e-mail that is everything I have received to date. More than once this has
helped me out of a jam when I needed to know a trick to remove something
or a part number for an obscure item and it was 5 in the morning when no
listers were up so there would be little chance of an immediate,
helpful response.

Another suggestion for dealing with the volume of mail is to get a
threaded mailreader. By that I mean a mail program that sorts messages
based on title. Put it in thread mode, delete the threads you don't want,
then go back to 'order of messages received' mode and read away.

The kind of list mail that bothers me even more than socializing or
questions about someone's minivan is the kind that is just bitching about
the socializing or minivan question.

My 2 cents

-Toby