E. Robert Tisdale said:
I agree with perseus.
David White apparently had nothing to contribute to the thread
and should have remained silent.
Notification that particular material is off-topic is indeed
a valid contribution here, or in any topical group.
David,
Please don't respond to off-topic questions. Just ignore them.
If we don't, then many uninformed people will remain that
way, increasing the odds that someone else posts off-topic.
If you can't ignore them, place the thread in your killfile.
When they become abusive in the face of facts, yes most of
the time I do that (the individual, not the thread).
If you don't know how to do this, please tell us which newsreader
you are using and someone should be able to help you do this.
Ah, but news client configuration is not topical here.
If you feel that you *must* reply to off-topic questions,
please try to be polite and helpful.
In what way was David's post 'impolite'? Yes, it was
terse, but imo 'manners neutral'.
Redirect the question to a more appropriate forum
Perhaps he didn't know which one. He does know that
the query was OT, so he responded accordingly.
where the original poster is more likely to get reliable answers.
Right. He could have found much info quickly e.g. with google,
but chose instead to disrupt the group.
Don't scold or admonish the original poster.
I saw no scolding or admonishment, only an indication
of nontopicality.
It doesn't do any good and can only be interpreted
as an attempt on your part to vent personal frustration and anger.
Oh, please. I saw no indications of anger in David's post.
Just an appropriate question.
Such behavior will *not* make you more popular among subscribers
to the comp.lang.c++ newsgroup.
I doubt very much that 'popularity' is David's (or most anyone's
here) motivation for participating here.
-Mike