[bookshare-discuss] Re: Curbing the off topic messages.

  • From: Rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx
  • To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:15:43 EST

Okay, I have now gone through all my email up to this one to which I am 
replying in which I announced something I was going to try in order to curb the 
off 
topic messages. I don't know that I am making a lot of headway in catching up 
on my email because now there are a lot ahead of this one and undoubtedly a 
lot of them are off topic. I did try to reply privately to those off topic 
messages, but I was not entirely successful. The first one I just gave up and 
sent 
it to the list and by now you have probably seen the explanation I gave in 
that one as to why I did so. The second one I tried to reply to gave me the 
same 
problem so I just went ahead and did not reply to it at all. Its domain was 
the same as the first so I thought that the problem was with the domain. As I 
continued, though, I was unable to reply to any of them except for the ones 
from some people with whom I was already engaged in a private discussion. What 
I 
did was to erase the Bookshare discussion address from the address field and 
paste the address I got from the email in its place. When I tried to send I was 
informed that the address was an invalid email address. I tried erasing that 
address and typing it in the address field character by character, but the 
result was the same. I have no idea what the problem was because I did the same 
thing with one from one of the people with whom I was already conversing 
privately and it worked just fine. Anyway, except for that first one I just 
refrained from replying. That was difficult because I really did have some 
replies 
even if the messages were considerably off topic. The ones I most wanted to 
reply 
to were the ones that were personal attacks against me. That desire was not 
so much a desire to defend myself as it was a desire to plead for some 
tolerance for alternative ideas and opinions. Really, there are so many people 
in this 
world who have points of view that are different from your own that you can 
only make yourself perpetually unhappy by constantly getting so upset over that 
fact. For my own sake, though, if not for other reasons I decided that it was 
time to do something about the plethora of off topic messages. One of the 
reasons that I am falling behind my email is because of the off list 
conversation 
I have gotten into that was engendered by the off topic discussion on list. 
It is being conducted on a much higher intellectual level and so requires a 
good deal more thought, so responding to nasty personal attacks too, especially 
when I am such a slow typist is just a little too much. As I proceed through my 
email I am sure that there will be more such off topic messages and I will 
see how I will react when I get to them and how much I can quell the urge to 
respond, but at least I am trying to bring this nastiness to a halt. It would 
really help, though, if I could get some cooperation from the rest of you. It 
is 
really not necessary to make snide remarks just because you disagree with 
someone.

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Subj: 
[bookshare-discuss] Curbing the off topic messages.   
Date: 
1/24/2009 11:01:40 PM Eastern Standard Time  
From: 
Rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx  
Reply-to: 
bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx  
To: 
bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx  
Sent from the Internet 
(Details) 
table end

Folks, right now I have fifty-five messages in my in box  and I have to get 
off the computer to do some of the other things that life consists of. When
I get back it is hard to tell how many messages I will have piled up. This is 
what I meant when I said that the off topic discussions are a problem for
me too because they take up too much of my time. So I am going to try 
something. For at least the messages I have waiting for me right now, if I have 
a
response and the message is clearly off topic and if the sender's email is 
visible I am going to paste that email address into the address field and reply
privately. Now if those who get private messages from me do not have a reply 
of their own then the off topic discussion could dwindle pretty quickly. I
realise that I am running the risk of being overwhelmed by off list messages 
and if that happens I am not sure how I will handle it. I may just have to
start ignoring some of you. But let's see how this works for right now. 

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