st: Claims of urgency

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

Statalist has an explicit warning about claims of urgency in its FAQ at
<http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/statalist.html#others>

"Urgency is your concern only Pleas of urgency, desperation, and the
like are deprecated on Statalist. Your urgency, however compelling, is
a private matter and does not translate into urgency for other members
of the list. In fact, labeling your question as urgent is more likely
to lead to your question being ignored by list members, who know that
in most cases urgency arises from disorganization. On Statalist, the
principle of charity is that you answer questions because you are able
and willing to say something about the question, not because you have
pity on the questioner."

It is a mystery why you are not aware of that as new members are asked
to read the FAQ before posting.

It is a fact that most answers to questions are sent very quickly;
those questions that members do not wish to answer -- usually  because
they are too obscure or too general or  because members do not know an
answer -- do not become easier to answer because it is claimed that
they are urgent. No amount of apologies will establish that you are a
special case entitled to subvert or overturn our existing policy.

Nick

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Andreas Karpf <andreas.karpf@gmail.com> wrote:

> i am really sorry that my first post on this list contains a [urgent]
> in the subject line. i know that pushiness like that is not
> appreciated on such mailing lists, but it is what it is and i hope for
> your kind understanding. I have a got a question which might seem
> quite trivial for a lot of you but despite of googeling for several
> hours i couldn't find any solution.
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