to newcomers: please try to solve the problem yourself beforeasking

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Kenneth Porter wrote:

> --On Saturday, September 11, 2004 10:21 AM -0400 Beej-in-GA 
> <bryan-smith at mindspring.com> wrote:

>> I would, however, like to point out that there are on most keyboards a
>> key called delete. The purpose of this is to get rid of unwanted things.
>
> This presumes that there's zero cost to acquiring and filtering.

not to mention the fact that a lot of folks might scan the postings 
and delete simply by subject field, and a poorly-chosen subject field 
might fake one into starting to read a posting that turns out to be 
worthless to them.

i have a simple solution to that -- i just delete postings whose 
subject field isn't clear and unambiguous.  that means *every* 
posting that does not have a subject field, or that contains phrases 
like "help!" or "urgent!" or "please read!".   and, in particular, 
those that think they're being cute by posting to a worldwide 
technical list and introducing themselves with the subject "hi".
grrrr .....

rday