It's been well over two weeks since I asked two direct and clear questions of the admins: > 1 - How, if at all, will list policy be changed? > > 2 - When am I going to get off moderation? I've been on moderation for 8 > months. This was done out of the blue. No particular incident was cited > nor was there mention of any rule I was supposed to have broken. For 5 > months or so I took it and kept on as usual giving you guys the benefit of > the doubt. I have been held guilty of causing others with their own free > will to possibly say bad things, even though I hadn't said any bad things > myself. Eventually my patience ran out and for the last 3 months I have > refrained from adding value to the PIClist. If this is going to continue, > then I might as well unsubscribe completely. I'm not saying that as a > threat or ultimatum, just a fact that under these conditions the PIClist > isn't worth it for me anymore. I am trying to appeal to your sense of > justice and fairness. While a couple admins did offer individual opinions, there has been no official response. Everyone has had their say, so it's time to resolve this. When I take it and pretend like there is no moderation for 5 months, nothing changes. When I don't say anything at all for 3 months, nothing changes. When after 8 months I try to discuss the policy and am careful to do so politely and respectfully, I'm labeled a whiner, by a admin no less. Request for official clarification are unaswered after more than two weeks. This is grossly unfair. It's also unfair how I was put on moderation. This was done out of the blue without any particular incident cited or mention of any rule I was supposed to have broken. I went back in the archives and found the previous 2 days of my posts (I think) before being put on moderation. For some reason I couldn't get the links to make it thru email without being garbled, so so I put them at http://www.embedinc.com/temp/temp.htm, numbered 1 thru 7 in reverse cronological order. 1, 2, 6, and 7 are technical posts discussing circuit details. In one I even took the trouble to draw a circuit and attach it to discuss it better. 3 is a response to someone that didn't even put a subject on his message and asked rediculous vague questions. Yes I did try to put him in his place, but note there was no name calling or anything else there against list rules. I also responded to his points individually so he could hopefully understand what was wrong with his original post. 5 and 6 were responses to Solarwind, who had months of history abusing the list with questions that were answered directly in the documentation. Anyone who was on the PIClist at that time knows full well he was just being lazy and had a attitude that he was entitled to answers without any work on his part. I wasn't the only one getting fed up with it. I told him to RTFM (as others had also done numerous times in the previous months) but also told him the answer was right where you'd expect to find it. Again, none of this was against list rules or things others hadn't also done. Someone mentioned the excellent article http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html, which is used as the reference for how to ask questions on many lists and forums. I had seen that before, but reread it when it was referenced again recently. One passage hit me in particular relative to the current state of the PIClist: There have been hacker forums where, out of some misguided sense of hyper-courtesy, participants are banned from posting any fault-finding with another's posts, and told "Don't say anything if you're unwilling to help the user." The resulting departure of clueful participants to elsewhere causes them to descend into meaningless babble and become useless as technical forums. This really hit home as it is exactly what is happening to the PIClist. The level of technical content has definitely declined recently, and the inverse correlation to the PC-ness of the list is quite strong. This is the *MIT* PIClist after all. If anything, the level of technical content and vigiallance should be particularly high here. You can be PC or have high technical content. Pick one. So that brings me to a concrete proposal. The PIClist should adopt the "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" (link above) article as the official reference for how things work here and the guiding principle for judging acceptable behavior on the list. Technically, nothing the article suggests should happen on either side is against list rules currently, but then again neither was what I said and I got put on moderation anyway. The PIClist is at a critical descision point. Do we value PC over high content and plain talk or not? I think this is such a important question that there should be a poll. The PIClist isn't a democracy, but it is still run supposedly for the benifit of the community. While the admins aren't bound by the outcome, they should however take note of it, and so should everyone else. I would hope they would at least want to know what the consensus is before making their decision. If a solid majority want PC, then this list isn't for me (and I suspect for a bunch of others either), and I would likely unsubscribe on my own or greatly curtail my envolvement. Anyone that does post has to be careful what they say and can't complain about getting moderated or other sanctions if they step out of line. If on the other hand a clear majority prefer plain talk, then the PC folks need to stop complaining and certainly stop putting people on moderation for saying "RTFM" and the like. I don't know about this mailing list software, but there may be a way to conduct a pole. I remember James did on occasion do that. So here is the proposed poll question: Resolved, that the PIClist adopt the article "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" (http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) as the official description of acceptable behavior. Yes (_) No (_) How about it? ******************************************************************** Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist