Subject: Re: Beating the dead horse again about VB From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/03/20 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3130916627109573@naggum.no> * cbarry@2xtreme.net (Christopher R. Barry) | Marcel, | | There's nothing wrong with thanking people for providing you with | useful information, but do it via _private email_. Some people pay for | their bandwidth by-the-minute (not me), and having to download many | articles you have before only quoted with 2 lines isn't cool, whether | you're paying by-the-minute or not. | | That's one reason, but there are others. coincidentally, this is why the Net is seen as hostile and some people think it's only for people who argue all the time. whereas the old etiquette rule was "reprimand in private, compliment in public" may work well for social interaction, the exact opposite works on USENET. just like Christopher, I get _real_ tired of seeing people agree with or thank or applaud eachother. the archetypical newbie USENET articles says no more than "me too!", and it's a reason we don't want them: people agree on a _tremendous_ amount of issues. thanks to the absence of thank you notes, every single reader of an article may get _something_ out of it. if they were to publish their thanks, chances are that none of _those_ articles would bring anything new to the world. however, directed at the author, it _is_ very valuable. Naggum's rule of optimal electronic communication: be harsh and critical in public, and kind and rewarding in private (I don't know whether I first formulated this or not, but people have given me credit for it so I guess I can, too.) #:Erik