[tde-users] Re: [OT] Spam

Well in that case, there are times and places that are appropriate for chit-chat and there are ones that are not. I have many times participated in meetings that were organized to discuss work-related matters (current research, teaching, etc.) but were hijacked by 2 or 3 people to talk about private issues unrelated to the reason why remaining 7-8 people have come for the meeting. These 2 or 3 people might have had fun talking but for the remaining majority of people this was unproductive and a waste of time. As was already said this list was created to give a fairly small community of TDE users a place to discuss TDE-related issues. The fact that several individuals have turned this list into their own private social media is regretable. The reason why I said I'll probably unsubscribe from the list if this goes on was not to somehow blackmail any of the said individuals - becuase I doubt they'll notice or care - but to make the list moderators aware that the community might be eroding because of the messy state of the list. I know at least several people on the list are happy with the way the list is at the moment. This is called a selection bias: ones that didn't like the list have silently left and no one noticed. There was a suggestion earlier to use filters. That's what I do at the moment. I use a KMail filter to put all tde-users emails into a dedicated folder and mark them as read. My original intention was to look into the folder at my leisure and respond to those emails where I can help someone. But the sheer amount of off-topic email is often so huge that it's just too much effort trying to pick out the on-topic ones. So, a humble request to list moderators: can we turn this list into a moderated one where every email needs to be approved and thus all off-topic emails can be rejected? Many lists on the internet work this way. Enforicing the discussion rules is a common practice, not some sort of mystical attempt to fight against the laws of the universe. Janek