Efficient use of bandwidth (was: Re: The latest)

[Dave Crocker]

>Jeff Williams writes:

	Folks,

	Please note the number of messages, time, bandwidth and energy consumed by
this lates silliness, initiated by Jeff.

	The burden of truly open communications is that we cannot prevent such
people from posting such mail.  The burden of filtering is moved to each of
us, individually.  We need to use extreme care in choosing what mail to
respond to.  We need to evaluate whether original messages are worth
responding to and we need to evaluate whether other people's responses are
sufficient.

	In other words, we need to consider whether our own messages are REALLY
necessary or whether they will end up just adding traffic to the list but
not really being all that important or helpful.  Typically that means that
such notes are just redundant.

	This is a very difficult job for each of us.  None of us is perfect, but I
entreat us all to consider the need.  Some people are not worth responding
to.  Some responses from others are sufficient and our own responses aren't
really necessary.

	To make the global, open lists have reasonabel load, we need to stop
responding to silly people and we need to avoid posting notes of small or
little incremental benefit.

	For example, there is no need to respond to this note from me.  Instead,
there is a need to stop responding to people like Jeff.

d/