Don't use default Google Group client (was re:....)

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

On 10/25/2013 08:40 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:44:45 -0700, rurpy wrote:
>> On 10/25/2013 02:05 PM, Terry Reedy wrote:
>>> On 10/25/2013 2:57 PM, Peter Cacioppi wrote:
>>>> The default
>>>> Google Group client is notoriously cruddy with quotes attribution.
>>> 
>>> So don't use it. Get any decent newsreader, such as Thunderbird, and
>>> access the list at news.gmane.org as gmane.comp.python.general.
>> 
>> Peter, you can ignore Terry's "advice" if Google Groups works for you.
>> There are a small number of Google haters here who seem larger due to
>> their obnoxious noisiness.
> 
> There are people here who hate Google Groups but simply don't chime in. 
> I'm one of them. Perhaps I should.
> 
> There are also many people who have a blanket "ignore" switch on anything 
> coming from GG, not out of any personal vendetta against you, but simply 
> out of self-defence. They don't say anything simply because they don't 
> see the posts.

They see the replies so they have every opportunity to reply.
I would hope the reason they don't is because they don't want 
to contribute to the already way too voluminous insults, flames,
nit-picking, troll-baiting and other non-python related garbage 
here.

>> I've been using Google Groups to post here for many years and with a
>> little care it is usable without annoying anyone 
> 
> This is true, and thank you for taking that care, that is really 
> appreciated.
> 
> But perhaps you should consider that although GG works for you, it 
> doesn't work for many people who don't take that care. So far Peter 
> Cacioppi is one of those people. He has shown no inclination that he is 
> willing to take the care to communicate well according to the community 
> standards here, and he has shown a distressing tendency towards snarky, 
> arrogant responses to polite requests to fix his posts.

I hadn't read this whole thread, I just wanted to provide an 
alternative point of view to that expressed by Terry Reedy
re Google Groups (since I use it myself).

However, looking now, I see you pointed out that Peter originally 
cross-posted his two messages to four groups:

 alt.comp.lang.c: 4 posts total
  one (serious, on-topic [*1], non-snarky) reply and a reply from OP.

 alt.comp.lang.borland-delphi: 4 posts total
  same as above

 alt.lang.asm: 6 posts total
  three (serious, on-topic, non-snarky) replies and a reply from the OP

 comp.lang.python: 26 posts and counting
  Two immediate not-on-topic responses, one polite but a little haughty
  (what made the author assume that everyone has a weblog to post to?)
  and one, from *you*, clearly snarky:
   > Oh look, your post was cross-posted to no fewer than four
   > newsgroups. What a surprise!
  Ironic that you are complaining about snarkiness from the OP.
  Those were followed (unsurprisingly) by a snarky response from the
  OP and then (currently and counting) 26 replies, many snarky, none
  addressing the OP's topic and none directly Python related.

Perhaps the snarkiness you complain about came from other earlier
threads, but I did see anything that struck me as horrible in a brief 
sampling.

Why didn't you and the other respondents just ignore the above post, 
likely leading to the same results as in the other three groups?
Instead we are all treated to yet another endless thread (with forked
subject lines making it even harder to avoid) of non-Python related 
verbal pissing.

>> except a few drooling
>> fanatics.  All access methods have pros and cons (and I've posted here
>> about many of TB numerous cons) so if the usability tradeoff favors GG
>> for you (or anyone else) I recommend you not be intimidated by the
>> anti-GG goon squad.
> 
> Your personal attacks are not appreciated. 

What I wrote was a non-personal attack.

> Why can you not accept that 
> people who post using GG's defaults cause pain and difficulty to many -- 

"Pain"?  If you really suffer pain from reading badly formatted 
posts you should consider the advice I gave to Mark Lawrence.
But ignoring the exaggerations, I can and do accept it causes 
some degree of annoyance -- it annoys me as well, and I've no
clue where you got the idea that it didn't.  But it is also 
annoying for many infrequent posters to go though the effort 
to set up a news group reader or deal with a lot of email from 
a high-volume mailing list.  And it is annoying for readers to
wade though the constant torrent of bitching by GG bashers. 
Of course I understand that you consider your annoyances more 
important that other people's but then don't we all.

I am irritated by things here too: people who haven't 
learned to tell the difference between "fact" and "my opinion", 
people who feel free to be blunt to the point of offensiveness
in their posts but who take offense at the mildest slight 
directed at them, people who can tell on the basis of a post 
or two if a question is homework or a poster is drunk or lying 
about a college degree, people who respond to every troll that 
drives by, people who regularly post messages intended for a
totally unrelated group, people who speak for "the community" 
when I never voted for them as spokesperson, etc.  But I try 
not to pollute this group by publicly venting my frustration 
every time I see an irritating post.

> probably the great majority -- of readers who use either the mailing list 
> or the news group to read this list? 

You have no basis other than wishful thinking to claim that.
Google groups has a very large following and my guess is that
the vast majority of c.l.p readers are silent and seldom if
ever post.  The large number of posts here from GG would suggest 
that the readership there is substantial, and the decline in 
"web-1.0" tools (usenet, mailing lists, etc) is additional 
evidence that the number of GG users (who are used to and 
prefer flashier web-based interfaces) may be much greater 
than you would like to think. 

> Don't you think that they are 
> entitled to complain when people repeatedly post double-spaced, hard to 
> read messages, or set the reply address wrongly, or include no context or 
> attributes, or all of the above at once?

"entitled" is too subjective a word for me but I do think
the such complaints have a major negative effect on the value 
of this group to those of us who come here looking for Python-
related discussions.

> Do you really intend to say that we have no right to complain about how 
> difficult Google Groups makes it for us?

Poor baby!  Life is sooo hard, isn't it? :-)

----
[*1] By "on-topic" I mean on topic for the thread, not on-topic 
for the group.