tracking problems

[Erik Naggum]

In comp.lang.c article <9169:May205:59:1791 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu>,
brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

   In article <blah> somebody writes:
     [ lots of stuff having nothing to do with C ]

   Question: I know this article is inappropriate for comp.lang.c. But how
   do I explain this to someone else? Is there some reasonably well-defined
   quality of an article that always implies inappropriateness?

   When someone asks what he's doing wrong with popen("who","r"), the
   answer might be that he's mismanipulating some FILE pointers, or it
   might be that he's misusing the output of the ``who'' command. How do
   you explain that his question was appropriate for comp.lang.c in the
   first case and comp.unix.questions in the second? Is the appropriate
   newsgroup a function of the question or of the answer? In either case,
   what's the function?

   Followups by e-mail. Yes, I'm asking this seriously. I simply can't
   figure out a good way to explain this ``appropriateness'' concept to
   people. Please *don't* send me e-mail if you don't have constructive
   suggestions.

By implication of your last sentence, I post.  The best way to explain
the appropriateness concept is by example.  Don't follow up to things
which are not appropriate to a newsgroup in that newsgroup, and the
stupid and ill-behaved posters may or may not go away.  Your note, for
instance, is not appropriate to comp.lang.c.  As a result, I simply
can't figure out how you think you could explain something to somebody
when you don't even have a clue to it yourself.

Note followup-to: alt.flame

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