Why

[dogriver]

Why, on mailing lists, do people have to send two, three, four messages
about one off-topic message? Then someone else responds to each of the
messages about the off-topic message, and the two people start
chit-chatting about off-topic messages they have known, how much better
off-topic messages used to be than your modern off-topic message, which
countries produce the best off-topic messages in broken English, how
people should check the rules about off-topic messages, a
counterdiscussion about what constitutes an off-topic messages, a rant
about how the list owner should change the definition of what
constitutes an off-topic message, ten people agreeing and ten people
disagreeing with the rant, a panel discussion about how a competing
list's list-owner does so much of a better job of moderating the list,
another panel discussion about how much better a job this list's
list-owner does than the competing list, a third panel discussion
debating which of the other two panel discussions is most accurate,
three requests to be unsubscribed and another ten to be unscribed, and
at least three people wondering where you can download Off-Topic and is
it free? That's three hundred off-topic messages about one off-topic
message!