Right on, brother!

The [OT]: tag is totally abused. Things should only be posted to the list
that are interesting in a technical sense, regardless of the tag.

The use of tags just gives all the Chatty Cathies a green light to blab
endlessly, while persons such as myself scan the list int the hope there
will be something interesting posted someday soon.

Any criticism of the list is treated defensively or with outright hostility
by management or by the chatty ones.

This is the first post I've made to the list in months. I still scan the
list, and I reply to questions, but have only been replying by private
email because of the large amount of spam each post generates(as the list
is now harvested by usenet) and because of the afore-mentioned hostility.

I have zero interest in non-technical issues. The piclist was good when
there were no subject line tags, because good people would complain when
someone posted off-topic stuff, and it would drop off. Now the [OT]: tag
protects that crap. Unfortunately if someone wants to ask a question about
something like optics, they have to use the [OT]: tag. Too bad it doesn't
even register above the other noise, and many of the smart ones filter out
all [OT]: posts so they don't even see it.

Posting that optics question with a [PIC]: subject line will get it
noticed, but probably only by management or one of the henchmen.

Am I making my opinion clear enough for management to understand? The
piclist is for technical people. There are philosophy lists for that other
stuff.

Get rid of non-technical posts and the number of posts will be slashed to a
manageable number. Then there will be no need for subject line tags.
Problem solved. Piclist improved.

I'm now waiting for a slow-top to suggest the need for still more tags,
perhaps one to allow for posts relating to optics :-)

Please send all defensive or hostile replies to /dev/null or whatever the
Windows NT equivalent is :-)

Cheerful regards,

Bob Blick

--
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