> I think it's fine if you plan on actually contributing, but if it's
> just a place you're going to use in order to get everyone to start
> visiting your blog, it's just disrespectful to doug and the entire
> list. It took Doug a lot of work to build this. One of the things he
> did was actually _participate in_ other lists, dropping his sig, as a
> way to get people interested. In other words, he helped others out,
> contributed to the life of other lists, and that was how he paid.
I tend to agree. One thing that irritates me a bit about this list is the frequent practice of sending posts consisting only of a URL. I appreciate that the posters who do this want to save bandwidth, but it would be nice if they put in a snippet or so from the site or a sentence or two of their own explaining why they think the site is worth visiting. The reason I say this is that I have yet to make the move to a broadband connection, so the way I use the list is usually to dial up my ISP, download my e-mail, and read and answer it off-line. If I then want to visit a web site, it takes a separate step of firing up the old browser and waiting for it to open up the site (sometimes that takes several minutes for ridiculously complicated sites).
Thus, I don't have time to check out every URL that everyone mentions, and that includes the poster's own blog site. How difficult would it be to copy a bit of the best part of the blog text and paste it into the post to this list? In any case, in case the list members who are referring to their blogs care (probably they don't), I want to let them know that if all they do is put the URL in their list post, I, for one, probably won't be taking the trouble to go to their web site.
Just now I note that one blogster is apparently named "Leninology," since that was the only name (or something that looked like a name) in the post. I would also appreciate knowing the names (or handles) of posters. Makes it more friendly that way. :-)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt