net comprehension

[P3D John W Roberts <roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think perhaps one reason for "unusual" behavior on the list is that this
"Internet thingy" hasn't been around long enough (or some people haven't been
involved with it long enough) for people to get a real common-sense grasp
of what it is they're dealing with, and the relative roles played by human
and machine on the net.

This weekend a person indicated that he(?) was tired of receiving email from
the list, and threatened to bring legal action if it didn't stop. It did not
appear to occur to the person to send email to the machine (at a different
address) and instruct to be unsubscribed, in accordance with the directions
that are sent out to all subscribers. Imagine a situation in which somebody 
phones a television station:
  Caller: "I turned on my television receiver, and your station was 
          broadcasting to my set. I'm tired of watching it now, but you're 
          still sending a signal. Please stop broadcasting to my television,
          or I will bring legal action against you."
  Television station: "Have you tried turning off your set?"
  Caller: "How am I supposed to know how to do that?"
  Television station: "It should be explained in the instructions that came
          with your set."
  Caller: "I threw those instructions away - I don't need instructions."

OK, so it's not a perfect analogy - a closer one would be for the irate
caller to place an advertisement with the same message, so all the 
viewers would receive it. The point is that it would clearly be
ridiculous to think about television in this way, and yet many people on 
mailing lists don't realize that they're just as wrong about how mailing 
lists work - instead of turning on a television receiver they "turned on" 
distribution from the automatic mailing list program, and to "turn it off" 
again, they need to use the "controls" of the program, not send rude or 
threatening (or merely annoying) messages to the thousand other readers of 
the list.

I also thought it was interesting that a person posted a question on a Sunday
afternoon, then gave up on receiving an answer after 44 minutes. Perhaps
it was an emergency situation (a publishing deadline, perhaps?), but that was 
not clearly stated in the original message. Any number of us could have looked
it up, if it were known to be a serious matter.

I have also received a number of very terse messages through the years,
ordering me to erase a previously received message from my brain. (That works
on Usenet, but not on mailing lists or private email. :-)

(My opinions.)

John R


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