At 04:06 AM 10/31/02 -0800, Jimbo wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
We should send people a different response to such posts. Posts my nonmembers are *not* moderated; they disappear down a black hole. Nonmembers that submit reasonable posts will expect to be published, and they'll be surprised and discouraged that their posts never appear.
Toby is right that the message should read differently.
I am aware when such posts happen. For regular contributors, I just ignore them. For newcomers, I try to respond. But the present system is imperfect, to be sure.
The problem is that the error message explicitly tells people to post to the list, which most of us can't do. There needs to be some way to report that database bug. It doesn't have to be on wikitech-l, but asking people to send email to an address that will discard it is counterproductive.