Hi all, Couple of points :
1)If I have to wait until the full digest comes then I have to scan for those threads I am following - sometimes the digest is massive. But if I get cc'd I see where the discussion is going in 'real' time and can ensure I know the score. Recent posts on religion and spelling a case in point. I had no idea until this morning's digest that so many people were pissed with the discussion going the way it did, by which time I had already posted. Whats more, the digest is just that, a digest of the ongoing discussions. How often have I responded to a question posed in the digest then with the next digest found multiple replies prior to mine, which were evidently posted prior to the digest being generated ? Alot of other lists either send out each mail to all subscribers (eg. mod_ssl mailing list) or advise if someone has posted a response in the same thread or as a reply to yours.
2)People do go off topic occasionally, I don' t think its such a bad thing, we are not robots, there are a number of things which we 'bring to the party' if they are relevant. Whether something is relevant or not can be pretty subjective. Free software is a community of people. User Groups are made up of people. Of course there needs to be some discipline to avoid tons of off -topic stuff cluttering things up, but people first!
3)If people are resigning from the list because a thread went off topic then I am very disappointed. Surely a complaint/flame against the culprits is better. (I can handle it, no asbestos required). Or to put it another way :Grow up and Get a Life!
Finally, I don't actually think the thread was that far off topic. I could go into a number of (arguably interesting) parallels between the history of the church and the evolution of free software. But who cares! BTW, for what its worth, I am an atheist. (Or is that too far off topic, maybe I should resign from the list...) Cheers Earl