Since I was one of the people who complained at that
point (I do not know if you were referring to me in your
post today), I just want to point out that I did not
specifically object to your posting of an OT question,
what I objected to was your explicit statement that PICLIST
had become "a defacto Atmel list". I recall saying that
I thought that, had you asked the Atmel question without
that statement, your question would have been politely
answered and there would have been no such firestorm. (I
also went on to try to market the red herring about
contributers leaving the list because of a greater degree
of OT traffic, and I will say that I was convinced by your
objection that this was an invalid argument.) One of the
most remarkable things about PICLIST, I believe, is the
high degree of tolerance, and, at times, genuine warmth
exhibited by its readership.  This is a much friendlier
place to be than, say, Slashdot, and I am thankful for
its existance; I learn a great deal here, including from
many of the OT threads. The OT stuff probably does go too
far on occasion, but I must say that, in my recollection,
in virtually all cases that someone has complained about an
OT thread the thread stopped shortly thereafter, just as
I imagine that the "how old am I" thread will following
your complaint. Hopefully no one will claim that,
on the basis of the acceptance of this thread so far,
that this is now a defacto age-disclosure list.. :-)

Overall, I think that we're a remarkably well-behaved
group, even if, on occasion, somewhat inconsistant or
cranky. Thank you, Peter, for helping to keep this on an
even keel.

--Bob

On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 11:05:46PM +1100, Peter Crowcroft wrote:
>
> A month ago - the day after Christmas - when the piclist was quiet and its
> digest length small, I got soundly criticised for daring to ask an 'off
> topic' item about problems programming an Atmel uC.
...
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Peter J. Crowcroft     DIY ELECTRONICS (HK) Ltd
> PO Box 88458,   Sham Shui Po,  Hong Kong
> Voice: 852-2720 0255      Fax: 852-2725 0610
>          Web: http://kitsrus.com
> -------------------------------------------------

--
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Bob Drzyzgula                             It's not a problem
bob@drzyzgula.org                until something bad happens
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