[Shotimes] Re: Enough of the OT, see ya....

[David P]

Thanks, Jim, I'm glad to hear that I've been able to help others.

    While I don't think we will run out of things to talk about as there
will always be new SHOwners, even years down the road, it seems to me that
some of the older members have grown bored of the list due to the lack of
new topics and ever-present maintenance questions that get posted on a
continual basis. I've been through this myself, and have left a good number
of lists during the past decade, as well as considering leaving this list a
few times. Once you've learned all that you need to learn, it's hard to
stick around. All the excitement and challenge is gone. At the same time, if
we are going to continue to drive SHO's, many of us need to stay in touch,
to help combat the uniqueness, obsolescence and brute cost of maintenance
for this particular car.While typically I prefer no OT on my lists, I agree
that at times, without OT, there would be no posts on this list.
Additionally, I'm sure we'd lose a good number of contributing members if
they had nothing interesting to talk about.

    At the same time, that's not a valid reason to run others off the list
by being discourteous. I know it's difficult to remember (just ask me...),
but I think we can make a more concerted effort to be diligent with the
subject line, and to keep the OT to a reasonable level (Need I restate my
argument from a few months back, where I noted that 60% of all posts were
OT?). I've been working on trying to read an entire thread (not easy to do
in outlook, but possible) before responding, instead of sending a different
reply to each person, and this includes on-topic subjects. Anyone have any
other constructive ideas? I'd hate to see any number of good members walk if
we can avoid it.

    Hope this wasn't too long (but too bad if it was ;)

David P

95MTX



~
----- Original Message -----
From: "James F. Ryan III" <av8r567@optonline.net>
To: "Steve Tatro" <stevetatro@att.net>; <shotimes@autox.team.net>
Sent: Saturday, February 08, 2003 19:09
Subject: Re: [Shotimes] Re: Enough of the OT, see ya....


> > And if anyone is sooooo upset reading the OT posts, we've all been
pretty
> > good about putting "OT" in the subject line lately, so one could simply
> > filter out all such emails, and never even know they were there.
>
> Yeah, but "pretty good" isn't good enough.
>
> Alot of the time a technical thread will go off-topic and noone bothers to
> simply change the Subject heading.
>
> On the flip side of the coin, sometimes a thread that starts out OT will
> change to a technical discussion and once again noone bothers to change
the
> Subject line.
>
> I am a vegetarian, so if I were to just delete (without reading) all of
> these OT posts about "which is the best mayonnaise", "fried bologna
> sandwiches", and "kubasa and lumpkey", I may miss out on some really good
> technical stuff.
>
> When I joined this list, back in the Topica days, everyone was very
diligent
> about updating the Subject line, for example - "Subject:  13"
brakes...Was:
> OT-best hamburger".  I haven't seen anyone do that in the LONGEST time.
>
> To remain a casual & friendly mailing list (and not p.o. some of the very
> knowledgeable list-members like David P and Don Mckinnon - just to name
some
> recent ones) we need to make a concerted effort to CHANGE THE SUBJECT LINE
> WHEN YOU CHANGE THE TOPIC OF THE THREAD.
>
> Note to David P:  I enjoy reading your very long posts, even though others
> have complained.  Even though they're sometimes opinionated they are
always
> chock full of good technical info.
>
> Jim Ryan
> '91 Plus  white/mocha
> lots of mods
> home in NJ for the weekend
> back to TX tomorrow night
> Texas - not a vegetarian-friendly state
>     they put meat in their vegetables and meat in their meat
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