[rescue] farting in the shower (topic change!)

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

Amy said:
> WOULD SOMEONE TELL ME WHY PEOPLE DON'T SAY ONE WORD TO ME OR BILL WHEN
> THEY ARE UPSET OVER SOMETHING AND THEN PULL GUILT-TRIP SHIT LIKE THIS?

Because they keep hoping that someone will wade
in with a clue-by-four and start moderating--but
when the *list owner* posts blatantly off-topic
(with all due respect, Bill, I agree that light-
hearted was a great idea, but farting in the
shower wouldn't have been my personal choice)
then some folks just give up.

In another post, Kurt said (after others had spoken):
> I enjoy topic drift.  I don't see why we need to just talk about
> hardware.

Methinks that some folks on the list have more
free time than others.  On days where I have more
free time, I've been known to post OT remarks
myself--but I try to keep that to a minimum.

Folks, I have 5500+ e-mails in the "latest"
rescue at sunhelp mailbox--since billp's e-mail on
New Year's.  That's an absurd amount of e-mail
for any of us to try to read--and I note that
the signal-to-noise ratio of this list sometimes
gets pretty low.  (We've had threads that started
off-topic and only wandered vaguely on-topic after
50 posts--which is about 45 too many by my
measures.)

As for me, I thought once-upon-a-time I had posted
some "suggestions" for on/off-topic-ness--oh yeah,
I did:
  http://lists.sunhelp.org/pipermail/rescue/2001-September/022233.html
and Bill even stated that he was going to edit that
a little bit and make it the policy.  If he ever did,
then I can't find it.

In my opinion, if we try to stick to that list (or
some variation of mrbill's choosing) then we can
keep the list as a viable item.  I for one have opinions
about many political/religious/social items (guns,
etc.) and at least some interest in a lot of the
random crap that shows up on the list--but the next
rescue@ posting that I read about how fast a pickup
truck will do a quarter mile is probably going to
be the last.  

Now *that* (racing pick-em-up trucks) is an example of
one of Dave McGuire's pet peeves--using a vise-grip where
a jackhammer is the right tool (if you want to go
fast, then that whole F=ma thing works better with
lower mass...like a sports car).  Just my humble opinion,
of course--and there are other threads that have
caused me to nearly sign off several times in the
last few months.  I keep sticking with it for the
nuggets of good data that show up in all the manure.

  --Rip