Re: Request: Anyone using bogus / "humorous" X-Message-Flag headers, could we please turn them off - Mailing list pgsql-general

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Glaesemann [mailto:grzm@seespotcode.net]
> Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 3:25 PM
> To: Bill Bartlett
> Cc: 'Andreas Kretschmer'; pgsql-general@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Request: Anyone using bogus /
> "humorous" X-Message-Flag headers, could we please turn them off
>
>
> > (Makes me have to think twice about raising
> > any _real_ issues though, like why my VACUUMs periodically keep
getting
> > into lock contentions with my JDBC connections and ultimately
causing me
> > to have to shut down Postgres w/ "pg_ctl stop -m immediate", or how
to
> > properly handle postmaster errors that don't appear to be documented
> > anywhere except in the source code...  [No, it's not the absolutely

> > most recent version of Postgres; No, I can't upgrade it.])
>
> This isn't fair, Bill. Your original question concerned posts your
> email client has trouble processing, which isn't the primary
> topic of the list. You also knew that it was somewhat contentious,
given that
> you've made comments such as "Believe me, I'm not defending
> Outlook", so you probably weren't overly surprised at some of the
> responses you got. Also note that the responses you got were attempts
to
> solve your problem: I don't see any that only belittled your choice of
software.
>

Most people didn't completely read my email and thus unfortunately
completely missed the point, in many cases seemingly because they were
too quick to jump on my use of Outlook as an email client (thus assuming
I was just one of "those" terrible horrible know-nothing Windows users).
It's obvious from 3 years of reading these forums that there is a "Linux
Postgres users good, Windows Postgres users bad" bias by many (but not
all) of the members rather than them realizing that " 'we' are all
Postgres users, 'those' other horrible people are MySQL / Oracle / etc
users".  I forgot that by posting about a header flag which could be
traced back to a Microsoft product, I'd be stepping right smack into
that muck.

Rereading my original email, you can see that the problem I was trying
to address was not my choice of email software but rather that several
people in these Postgres listservs (like other people in other
listservs) were intentionally misusing a specific header flag that is
used by specific email programs (only the various "Outlook"-related
ones, as far as I've been able to determine) to highlight messages for
special handling.  Granted that they were using it for "joking"
purposes, but after a while, all jokes get old.  (After spending 4 days
in a row dealing with significant Postgres system crashes on several
different servers, "old" just happened to rub me the wrong way whereas I
normally just grit my teeth and ignore it.)  After researching this flag
further (after seeing the feedback I got on this forum), I've discovered
that this type of misuse is frequently used, and even recommended on
many Linux-oriented web sites as a means, to annoy Outlook-based users
(as a means to annoy Windows users).  As I mentioned above, I think in a
forum such as this, where "we" need to all be Postgres users, I don't
think it's appropriate to intentionally annoy any of our group.  (That
may not have been the intent, but after seeing the many Linux-oriented
web sites and forums recommending its use for specifically this purpose,
now it does annoy me even more.)

(Just for the record, not that I should have to justify my background
and biases [or hopefully lack thereof] to the group: I gave up fighting
platform wars a LOOONG time ago, back when I used to try to get the
corporate world to bring in Macs instead of Windows 3.x.  Now I
generally use the best tool for the job, or the tools I have to use when
that's not an option.  Insofar as systems and OS's, I am currently
handling 140+ servers running a pretty much even split between Win2K3
and various versions of Linux (primarily several SuSE 9.x versions, a
few Red Hats and at least one Debian), with VMware instances of 2 SuSE
"servers" running inside this specific XP development desktop, managing
pretty much everything remotely via SSH and bash (via Cygwin on the
Windows servers).  I may be using Windows on my desktop, but I don't
think I'd put myself into the category of being merely one of "those
terrible horrible know-nothing Windows users".)

>
> If you *are* having issues with PostgreSQL, it would behoove you to
> at least post them and see what kind of response you get,
> rather than judge the list as a whole due to the response you got to
an
> off-topic post. Many of the people on the lists have been here for
years and
> have gotten lots of helpful advice, which is why they've stuck
> around, and are many others that are happy to share their advice and
> experience. You never know: you might be pleasantly surprised.

I agree that the majority of the responses that I've seen over the last
3 years of reading several of the Postgres listservs were indeed
attempts to help (including several replies that I've posted to people's
problems).  However, I've also seen too many times where instead of the
reply being an attempt to help the person solve their problem given
their situation, the responses instead were of the "you're a fool for
using that version / that OS / that database schema / that program
design / etc" variety.  (Notice that all the responses that I got other
than Andreas's offer to turn off his use of that header flag were
"change your email program", even though my email program is working
exactly as it is supposed to.  Helpful if the program was the issue, but
instead the replies missed the point.)

I think this leads to people not asking questions because they don't
want to deal with having to justify _why_ they are having the problem or
_why_ they are still using the Postgres version or OS version or tools
that they are using or _why_ their program is updating data that way.
(I have one coworker in exactly this situation.  He used to be a regular
reader of several Postgres listservs and an occasional poster, but after
receiving too many responses of the "change your program because CLEARLY
it's wrong" variety, where the person posting the response had no idea
of why the program was written that way or didn't care that it needed to
operate that way to fulfill a business need, he stopped reading all
Postgres listservs.  He no longer posts requests for assistance because
he thinks its more aggravating than it's worth, but he now also just
assumes that when Postgres breaks, it's just because the database
doesn't work properly.)

To be fair to these listservs though, they are MUCH better than many in
terms of providing support, and I can't remember the last time I saw a
flame war erupt.  (But I'm still not going to post the problem I've been
hitting recently running Postgres 7.4.1 on a SuSE 9.0 box -- somehow I
think the first few responses might be "get OFF that version".
[Hopefully will upgrade very soon, but can't just yet on that specific
machine.  Meanwhile it's a production server so I'll just have to deal
with it...])

>
> Best,
>
> Michael Glaesemann
> grzm seespotcode net
>
>