RE: [Leica] Re: learn to post your message (off-topic)

[Alan Ball <AlanBall@csi.com>]

Jeff,

Your point of view is interesting and well documented. But:
- - "decades-long traditions of e-mail": on your planet maybe, not on the 
planet of 99 pct of current Internet users, who have become acquainted with 
e-mail within the last 5 years.

- - current "GUIified" software is the way software evolves. e-mail server 
and client protocols and standards are also evolving. There is no reason 
user behaviour should not evolve as well.

- - most modern e-mail clients offer superb filtering tools and other 
management tools allowing the user to be more productive with his/her 
e-mail time. Preview windows are just one of those tools. Gary is right in 
taking advantage of them.

With preview windows turned on, the user may avoid opening mails that (seem 
to) have no interest for him. I see that as an intelligent extension of the 
subject line. The time gain on a LUG download is very significant.

Furthermore, a mailing list such as the LUG is a hybrid beast, somewhere 
between the threaded nntp format and the private, bilateral, e-mail. There 
is no auto-thread feature, but posts form a logical PUBLIC conversation 
thread, often made invisible because of non-efficient practices such as: 
not naming the poster one answers to, changing the subject line to the 
point where no sorting by subject can be made by the e-mail client in any 
useful way, not pasting enough of the original post in the answer, and, 
yes, pasting the quoted original post on the top of the message, making the 
preview function useless.

Mailing list practices should not necessarily be the same as bilateral 
e-mail practices. The users have the ability to make the mailing list 
experience lighter or heavier for other subscribers. With the traffic on 
this particular list, I appreciate posters that help me accessing the LUG 
knowledge base more efficiently.

Alan

On vendredi 26 mars 1999 6:51, Jeff Moore [SMTP:jbm@jbm.org] wrote:
> At 25 Mar 1999 19:27:50 -0800, "Gary Todoroff" <datamaster@humboldt1.com> 
wrote:
> Details of the user interface of your particular email client should have
> no bearing on proper, long-conventional polite email reply practices.
> ...<snip>....
> I think that part of the problem is that many people writing email today
> haven't been properly steeped in the decades-long traditions of email, 
and
> another part is that many current GUIfied mail user agents make it really 
> difficult to reply properly.  For example, a good user agent, one 
designed
> with knowledge of conventional practice, will offer to paste the 
replied-to
> message into the send buffer, set off with the chosen quote prefix 
(usually
> "> ") and with the sender's name and timestamp at top, with one simple
> (keyboard or mouse) gesture.  Then it's the user's responsibility to wade 
in,
> cut out the deadwood, insert substantive comments, and let fly.
>
> A bad user agent (the worst which comes immediately to mind from personal 
> experience would be that travesty, Lotus Notes, but I'm sure Microsoft 
can do
> equally bad work) stuffs the entire replied-to message (or a string of 
them)
> at the bottom like a chain of cast-lead albatrosses, perhaps capable of 
being
> "hidden" if "closed" using some proprietary GUI button which corresponds 
to no
> existing standard part of an email message.  If the user's mail program 
seems
> to encourage, nay enforce, bad email practices, then users who've seen 
nothing
> else, or even users who know better but have gotten tired of jumping 
throught
> the awkward hoops necessary to fight the bad software and compose a 
proper
> piece of email, will fall into these sloppy practices.
>
> I have to assume, then, that "Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5"
> encourages Mr. Todoroff in such broken practices....<snip>....