Smooth Sailing

2000-2-3 11:20:00

Quiet day today. Looks like Rick's advice took hold.

Also I notice that Mark's "Shoot the Breeze" forum seems to be taking off.

Good idea Mark. A lot of members just want to post something light and doing it there will ease the load for people who want to focus on the heavy stuff. I think we should post some of these addresses periodically.

The "Shoot the Breeze" forum is at:

http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/50816

In addition John W's forum fills a need for members who do not like conflict. John only allows postings that are in a supportive direction.

The address for this is:

http://disc.server.com/Indices/72212.html

John tabulates that there are over 5500 readers checking in each week there. He gets quite a few casual drop-ins that are not members.

For those who wish to discuss Mormon mysteries Sterling's form is at:

http://www.listbot.com/cgibin/subscriber?Act=3Dview_archive&list_id=3Ddavid=s_outcasts

Concerning this forum I believe that under normal circumstances there will be no reason to limit our postings. especially if we follow certain guidelines that I sure Rick will support.

First I would guess that about half of our posting space is taken up by a repetition of a previous post. For instance maybe someone says

"Great post!"

That may be his entire message, but then he repeats the five page post that he is commenting on. I notice some of the old timers still do this, which tells me that sometimes the writer may not know how to respond without repeating all the material.

If for any reason you do not know how to make a clean reply, ask Rick, me, Mark or someone else on the list.

Now if I was going to reply to Rick about a five page post he made, instead of making a reply that repeats the whole writing, I would say something like this:

Great post on ABC Rick. I particularly like the part on XYZ.

Now let us suppose XYZ is two lines of copy. In this case go to Rick's post and copy only those two lines. Then create a new e-mail letter and paste it in there. Finish your letter and send it to the keys. I keep the keys address in my address book so it is readily available and I rarely use "reply" for postings.

Most address books allow you to use nicknames. My nickname for the Keys address is KEYS. This way when I want to send a message to this forum I just type KEYS in the "TO" column.

So, if we can all just cooperate in this one area, we will free up a lot of space. Another important reason to do this is that some members print up all the postings and read them. I often do this for my wife. Sometimes I may print up a 100 pages and about 60 of them are duplicated unnecessary material. Now my printer only costs about a penny a page, but there are some that cost about 20 cents a page so this is a good economical reason to pay attention to this.

Now this may all seem elementary to a computer whiz but there are many who feel like they are all thumbs, so this may be an important post for them.

Let me repeat - there are a lot of people that can help if you have a posting question. If you do not know who to ask, just post to the list and you'll probably get about ten replies.

With this said I see no problem in posting pretty much what we feel is of interest or in line with the discussion. The great thing is that if you want to play around or post off topic you can now go to Mark's site.

Overall I think that if we can stop these long quotes, the workload here will become very manageable. I didn't plan on recommending the splitting of this list until we get to around 350- 400 people. I think that if we follow correct procedure here that all will work out.

So in answer to Sterling's comment which was:

"My final statement at the "Keyster" list unless J.J. specifically invites further comment from me."

(Notice how I did not quote the whole thing)

Sterling and everyone else on the list is welcome to post anything they desire within reasonable parameters. If any disagree with my writings that is fine too, but when we duel, let us do so with respect for the views of other's.

An important point to remember is that everyone here is doing their best to progress toward the light and those who we think are the most astray may be doing better in the eyes of the Watchers than the seasoned seekers.

By the way Rick - I did check your daughter's picture out. Pretty cute - almost as cute as my own daughter Rachel, but I admit to strong bias. One of the great mysteries of the universe is how a couple of strange ducks like us could have two such beautiful daughters. Good karma maybe.

And Samu... Every time I go to the archives site I am more impressed. You are doing a great job.

One thing I would like to note is that there are a number of sites now posting my writings and many of my posts have typos and other mistakes. If any are posting the writings and notice some glaring errors, go ahead and correct them so long as the original meaning is not disturbed.

I remember the other day I had a post (I believe it was in response to Blayne) and instead of saying "brother" it read "bother" and the whole meaning was changed. Fortunately, my wife caught it for me or Blayne may have thought I was on the warpath again.

I'm too short on time to comment on the last questions, but I should have some extra time tomorrow - TGIF.

In the meantime I want to express appreciation to all the members of this list for your cooperation. I only wish I could give each of you the response you deserve. I know we have our conflicts from time to time, but the storms always end and when they do the smooth waters feel extra nice.

Here's to smooth sailing for a while.