Re: apple macintosh plus; startup disk

[CUTjefbla@bconnex.net (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Thu, 22 Apr 1999 12:54:22 GMT, Randy Shackelford
<shack@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:

>Well my comment on this is the proof is in the pudding. Followups which
>complain about being in the wrong group would eliminate the problem if
>it actually worked. They're still coming.

And new users are always coming onto the net so there will always be
new people that must be told where off-topics posts would be more
appropriate.

>My posts about how Nathan is gone now always have an answer to a question
>to which he would reply with his trademark spew instead of giving a useful
>answer. So hopefully you understand how much less useless crap gets posted
>now than then.

But do you have to gloat about it?  Not everyone is happy to have lost
Nathan's knowledge, software and efforts to maintain the
comp.sys.apple2 FAQ and possibly other things I'm not remembering at
the moment.

>Find an effective way to keep inappropriate posts out of the group. I
>propose one way, others propose another. I don't see any decrease in
>such posts coming about from complaining here. I've given pretty good
>reasons why this doesn't work, I believe.

There isn't an effective way to keep inappropriate posts out of the
group.  That is why we must continue to let everyone know, not just
the person who posts in the wrong place, that this isn't the place to
ask Mac questions or anything else that pops up.

>There are occasional Apple II (and III) posts in the Mac groups. I must say
>that people are more cordial about inappropriate posts there.

And if they don't end up telling the poster to ask here in
comp.sys.apple2 then they are doing the poster a disservice because
he/she still won't know where to go to get the best audience for
his/her posts.

I imagine most, if not all, the Apple II related posts in the Mac
group do get referred to here, though.  With the exception of messages
that are in some way relevant to the Mac.

>Like I said before I see a lot of "how do I get Win95 to print to a
>Laserwriter" type stuff. If not cheerfully answered, no one complains
>at least. I just ignore it like I do everything which doesn't belong
>here.

People trying to figure out how to use a piece of Apple hardware on
another machine is probably relevant to this group as well as to Mac
groups.  There is more chance that an Apple II user here, or in a Mac
group, would have knowledge (pintouts, interface specs and such) about
an ImageWriter II than there would be in a PC related group.

These posts are asking about a piece of Apple hardware that isn't
specific to either the Apple II or the Mac.  However, many of the Mac
questions tend posted here tend to be completely specific to the Mac
(asking about Mac hardware and/or software).

>: The ratio of Win/PC to Mac post in this newsgroup is probably well
>: over 1 to 50.
>
>Pretty logical since the PC crowd wouldn't expect a group with apple in its 
>name to be at all germaine while the uninitiated Mac type might.

Exactly.  Which is why I don't understand why you complain about the
occasional PC related off-topic post when there are so few of them.
You seem to be able to ignore the larger number of Mac related
off-topic posts without any problem.

>Me too. Everyone should just try email replies if they don't like what's
>being posted. At worst it'll keep a thread like this from going ad nauseum.

Personally, I will continue to post to the group to point people to
the appropriate place for their messages.  The only reason you haven't
seen me doing it a lot more in the past is that someone else always
beats me to it.

Which, come to think of it, is another good reason why you shouldn't
e-mail this kind of a pointer to someone.  If you do, then no one else
in the group knows that the poster has been told that it is
inappropriate for this group.  Basically, if we only e-mailed people
to point them to the appropriate place, it would end up being the
equivalent of a mail bomb.  The poor Mac user who stumbles in here by
accident would get bombarded with e-mails telling him/her to use one
of the Mac groups.  :)

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