At 5:48 PM -0600 3/17/99, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>But will the issue at hand (arbitrary text substitutions) actually help
>this? Will anything except for a vigilant owner and true moderation
>actually protect you from a list wrecker?
It can help. A dedicated list-wrecker, it might be really tough to
stop. It depends on just how dedicated and stubborn he wants to be.
But you can stop an entire class of meta-fights from ever starting
simply by automapping "rhymes with duck" to f***. Because everyone
knows what the person meant to say, but actually SEEING it said is
what tends to push people's buttons. And I'm actually not nearly as
worried about the word itself, but to the inevitable over-reaction to
the word and the meta-fight the response creates (yeah, so someone
posts the message about the AOL virus hoax. Again. Sigh. That's
annoying. The 30 people who -- on the list -- want to ream the guy a
new orifice, that's what screws over the list. And you can tell
people not to do that all you want, but the only SAFE way to keep
those meta-fights off the list is to snip the source problem and keep
it from starting the fight...)
I actually have philosophical issues with mapping rhymes-with-duck to
f***. My interest in the substitution issues lie more in removing or
truncating things like the hotmail (and yahoo, and...) advertisements
that go on every piece of e-mail. For rhymes-with-duck, I'd rather
bounce it and suggest the user reword their message, rather than do
it for them. But there are classes of problems where I could make an
argument that auto-remapping DOES make sense (perhaps, say, to use it
as a cheapie spell-corrector for all those people who can't spell
unsubscribe....).
No single right answer here. Lots of little problems, each with
answers that overlap situationally. And so it comes down to what the
tools you have and how you can configure them.
(and if that person really can't make his message without using
rhymes-with-duck, well, at least he'll be having his argument with me
privately, and the list can go on along its business withnout being
sidetracked by yet another annoying meta-fight... )
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
(Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
This just out: it has been determined that Salad Forks are not Y2K
compatible, and won't work after 12/31/1999. Until cutlery
manufacturers can issue appropriate patches for their hardware, users
are encouraged to purchase a set of chopsticks. The fallback plan,
using the dinner fork for the salad, has been rejected as tacky.
References:
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