Date:         Wed, 3 Oct 2001 12:26:16 -0700
Reply-To:     Steve Hoge <steve_syncro@TECHIE.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Hoge <steve_syncro@TECHIE.COM>
Subject:      Re: EBAY Sales Posts (Are they really necessary)
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

In response to the lastest EBAY vs no EBAY discussion:

I personally don't mind the intermittent references to eBay items -
especially when the item is particularly notable or exotic (eg '16"
Syncro Tristar Crewcab $1000.00' ).  But you do have to ask yourself
whether it's worth the bandwidth to read yet another notice about some
diddly-sh*t spare parts for sale.  (No offense, Ben - someday I'll need
those brake parts!)

You'd expect to see ordinary spare-parts appearing in the automotive
section of eBay, and if you need them you're probably (or ought to be)
out there looking for them already.  I DON'T expect to see a 16" Syncro
Crewcab with a $1000 reserve, so a heads-up to the list is still
interesting for us curious tire-kickers - even when we're not in the
market to purchase it.  Sometimes it's just fun to see the pictures.  In
short, an item like that qualifies as *news*.

For those who have pointed out the efficacy of header filtering and the
Delete key, note that many of us read the list in DIGEST mode so that our
inbox doesn't beep at us all day long.  In our cases no conventional
filtering (OK, I'm not counting fancy sed or perl scripting) will
eliminate what we happen to consider superfluous content.  So we gotta
slog through it all, and the digests do sometimes become "clogged" with
stuff that's tough to skip over or parse through.  My personal pet peeves
are the inclusion of the HTML source leftover from multi-part MIME
postings - Tom C., can gerry filter that out as part of the digest
compilation? - and inclusion of the entire original post in a reply
rather than an intelligently edited summary.  Might it be time for a list
etiquette review and update?

-Steve