Re: FW: AOL Chief to Keep His Head Down at Microsft Trial

[Damion Yates <nospam [at] rd.bbc.co.uk>]

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Simon Hudson wrote:

> > 2/ AOLs reputation for having a single clue about how to do anything
> > isn't the most believable.
>
> I know very little about AOL except that one of their free CDs is, as I
> type, doing a sterling job of protecting my desk from unsightly coffee
> rings.

Snap! I've got several I use as mats around the house.

> Why does everyone hate AOL?

Because AOL didn't provide any information to their users regarding how to
behave on the internet, nothing about any of the many written and unwritten
rules. Especially regarding Usenet. Other ISP's for beginners didn't even
provide access to Usenet so the users proved less of an 'annoyance'. AOL
users frequently made stupid posts to 100's of News Groups on the wrong
topic, asking for people tp help them do some pointless crack on some game
their Mum had just brought. This was then followed up by the now famous 'Me
T00' type posts by yet another AOL user.

It was probably only a percentage of AOL users but they gave the ISP a pretty
bad name, other beginners ISP's with children as the prime users, didn't make
it quite as easy to access Usenet and this spared the aged Old Timers.

The problem hasn't so much gone away, but more moved aside. I don't see that
many luser [at] aol.com postings to a group with 'Me t00' as the only lines in the
response as much these days.

Now-a-days I do see more spam, as more and more small business men, new to
the internet are fooled in to thinking they should buy a piece of spam
software and use it to advertise. Fortunately almost everyone learns within
a short time, that this is a lame idea and that they have just become
extremely umpopular. But there are a great many small businesses left to go
through this.

I also see a complete failer to cope with basic threading of emails and
responses. The format is simple, most people on this list abide by it:

leave a blank line between sections and responses in the email. Indent the
previous email with a recognised charactor ': > ] } )' with the name of the
previous person quoted at the top. Stick to 77 chars wide on all lines of
the email. use '-- ' at the beginning of a line at the end of your email to
signify that the signature follows and keep the signature under 4 lines
(unless it's a really worth while joke/ascii art). Your response should
never be, 'me too' unless you put <aol>mee too</aol> which makes it kind of
funny. And should definitely be longer than your Sig. You also should spell
stuff correct and have good grammar and not be condecending or arrogant.

I saddly fail on the last few points, my spelling and english are awful :-(

The biggest problem now is that MS email clients tend to start your cursor at
the top of an email with the previous mail indented with spaces to 102 chars
or something equally as lame. It's hard to follow threads, and infact it's
MS that have caused the Internet be irritating these days, no longer AOL
users.

--
Damion Yates - Damion.Yates [at] bbc.co.uk

Start your own FREE mailing list at

&copy; 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved