Well, I just wrote my 10 thousandth private message (possibly an exaggeration but it seems like that many) to a list member asking them to sign off on their message to this list serve.
It is only common courtesy in my judgment to tell people who you are when you write a message. The behavior of many of the Internet's participants makes it a most rude and obnoxious environment; people hiding behind pseudonyms in the most cowardly way.... or people just being grossly inconsiderate and self absorbed so as to not care whether their correspondents know who is addressing them.
I simply will not tolerate that behavior here in my "living room" filled with friends who share their fascination with vintage lightweight bicycles. And most of you agree that our standards are similar. And nowadays it is relatively easy to add an AUTOMATIC "signature" to all your emails containing the basic info about you and where you are from, etc.
Now, with yet another very nice non-USA member, I come to realize again how wonderful it is to have a "community" that knows no boundaries, indeed a worldwide fellowship here on the web. And therefore it is even more important to say where you are writing from, without lazy or casual abbreviations.? Let me quote from rule #1 here: " Please spell that info in a "straight up" way, using no abbreviations or short cuts so people can readily understand. We want our members to know where we are from; that will assist in creating a community, one in which we are communicating "real person to real person," so to speak. If you cannot do this, for whatever reason, please do not join."
What to do about those of you who are lazy or inattentive or indifferent to oblige on this basic requirement?
I am already spending tons of time writing individual, non-form messages asking those who do not sign off properly. There seems no end to it. So my latest idea is to just simply suspend those offending persons and require them to sign up again with an accompanying pledge to follow the rules.... The hassle to sign up again is not any more than my time cost to write these redundant warning messages; it seems only fair.
So, I will try that for a while and see how it goes.... (Sigh)
Dale Brown
Greensboro, North Carolina USA
http://www.classicrendezvous.com