comp.sys.apple2 != Macintosh (was: Re: apple macintosh plus; startup disk)

[greg@apple2.com]

In article <zQaT2.1231$2n1.67816@news12.ispnews.com>,
Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:
>greg@apple2.com wrote:
>>Andreas U Schlieman <aschliem@acsu.buffalo.edu> wrote:

>>> I hope you know that you're only wasting bandwidth with a post like this.
>>> If you can't or won't answer the question, why not just refrain from
>>> posting a followup.

>> It serves as an open disincentive for others who would try asking other
>> Mac questions here, just as yours serves as a disincentive for others not
>> to provide such disincentive postings.  An e-mailed response deters only
>> one individual, and after the fact at that.

> Actually, since articles like this are typically cross posted to a slew
> of Mac groups as well,

Like this, but not like this, since the one at the root of this thread was
not crossposted at all, making the rest of your generalization irrelevant
to the case at hand.  But, letting the sentence finish...

> there's no guarantee that the poster will read your
> followup unless you post to the same groups.

What part of the word "others" DO you understand?  Sure, there's the
slight chance that my posting would be the first to correct the specific
poster, but it still serves as a short-term deterrant (based upon expiry
time) to other posters in the near future.  If you let it be seen as
appropriate to post questions about Macs to this group, however obsolete,
it will only encourage more such postings.

But I'll tear myself down a little bit here and say that I should have
changed the Subject header much earlier than this.  After all, if another
Mac user comes in here and sees this thread with so many articles in it
they too might mistakenly assume this is a mac newsgroup.  (Feel free to
drop the "(was: ...)" phrase from your followup's Subject header if you
feel compelled to write one, next respondents.)

>> After all, that is _your_ excuse for posting rather than e-mailing, right?
>> :-)

> Trying to deter future posts, which is of course a lost cause. People will
> always post nothing useful and complain about being in the wrong group.
> Unless the poster is asking a Win/PC question, in which case someone will
> cheerfully answer the question without complaining. People typically only
> complain if it's a Mac question posted inappropriately.

Perhaps it is bitterness that Apple dumped the Apple II line in favor of
producing Macs.  Microsoft/Intel/IBM haven't done anything as personal
against the II line.  But let's not rehash all that again.

Usually Win/PC questions are somehow related to the group, usually asking
about how to get disk images to and from a PC for use with an emulator or
on an Apple II.  Mac users tend to ask Mac-only questions, rarely relating
at all to the Apple II.

If you take the content of the articles into account instead of just their
platform allegiance, I think you'd see posters being "shown the door"
fairly and evenly.

-- 
Nine quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine hundred ninety-nine
billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand,
seven hundred sixty-nine bottles of beer.  You take one down, pass it around,
nine quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine hundred ninety-nine