M. Fioretti wrote:
On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 18:47:22 PM -0600, Barbara Duprey ([email protected]) wrote:
M. Fioretti wrote:
... Why waste any more time over this investigation?
For one thing, I'm learning a lot -- and collecting it in a form
that should be useful to others. I don't consider it a waste of my
time.
Excellent point. No problem over this. I am still sure that it won't
make management of the users list any better, or that if it will it
will be a terribly unefficient way to do it, but organizing knowledge
is always good, no question about that.
Now, could you please explain what you meant by "don't work in
the digest-form case"?
I have no idea :-) I was just quoting what _you_ wrote, because the
way you wrote it it seems like another "special case" to deal with.
What I was saying is that Reply All does behave as expected when
responding to an attachment in a digest-form message, and can certainly
have a place in a strategy that uses those. (You've read the earlier
discussions about this, so you know why I mentioned this point.)
Before I continue, please do understand that everything from now on is
(even if the tone is a bit strong due to 6+ years frustration over
this) meant to be written trying to HELP you and the list in general
to be EFFECTIVE. When I write (or already wrote) "idiot" or anything
similar, is only a judgement about the proposal itself, not the people
like you believing it in good will. Now:
By the way, all the solutions I'm looking at require exactly one
message to the (unsubscribed only) user privately, and one to the
list telling everybody not to bother with the CC'ing, etc.
NO, NO and NO. Whenever you write and believe anything like this, you:
a) (again, no personal offense meant) but you show not enough
understanding about what email actually is and how it actually
works. Email delivery and reading are ASYNCHRONOUS AND NOT REAL
TIME. Look at this sequence of events:
1) Unsubscribed OP John sends a message to the list which
we'll call X
2) Subscribed user Barbara sees the message, sends the
private answer and the copy (which we'll call Y) to the
list, telling everybody to not bother with CC'ing etc
now, will you please understand that there is no guarantee
whatsoever that when all the other subscribed users will open their
mailbox they will find BOTH X and Y in it? Email delivery is not
real time. It depends on the istantaneous status and load of all
the servers in the delivery chain, which is different for each
single subscribed user. It is almost certain that many times
several subscribed users, even after Barbara has done step 2 above
and sent Y to the list, will ONLY see X in their mailboxes and
therefore will act exactly as Barbara: net results, every
susbscriber receives more than one "Y" message
I *do* know that, and have considered it. But in practice, very few of
us actually monitor this situation, and we tend to wait a bit before
responding. How often, for example, have you seen both Harold and me
sending the notifications that somebody has probably not seen a
response? I believe that would be -- never. You're not dealing with
every subscriber trying to do this.
b) show you never stopped a moment to think about human psychology and
effectiveness. Even IF there never were more than one Y answer per
unsubscribed user message (which again, is impossible to
guarantee), what you suggest GUARANTEES that:
every subscriber receives AT LEAST two copies of every message to
every unsubscribed users, made in a way that is impossible to
filter out as duplicate, every day he or she remains subscribed.
This is ANNOYING LIKE HELL for the great majority of people, also
because (rightly) it NEVER happens anywhere else
How do you get there? Unsub sends message that initiates a thread.
Barbara sends private message to the user and a one-liner to the list
(not containing the original post). All other thread traffic is
identical to what it would have been if the OP were subscribed. And it's
entirely likely that the one-liners will be filterable, if you object to
seeing them.
In other words, you are taking the question
"how do we deal with people who, by definition, may only send one
message per month to the list and most often will only send only one
message in their lifetime"
And saying that this is a smart answer:
"in order to avoid the frightening possibility that those people (who
only take, not give) feel annoyed by getting, say, four copies of
answers to their ONCE-IN-A-WHILE QUESTION instead of one,
Huh? What we're trying to do is two things: make sure that he does see
the answers to his question, and keep him from being swamped by other
list traffic. What you are claiming is the motivation is totally silly,
it wouldn't happen anyway.
let's work
in a way that a) demands that every subscriber endlessly fiddles with
their filters
Not even close. Those of us who bother with the filters now (and I
haven't had to change mine since I first set it up several years ago)
would continue to do so; nobody else has to care at all.
and b) is SURE to double (at least) the amount of
"messages due to unsubscribed users" he or she receives EVERY DAY TILL
THEY REMAIN SUBSCRIBED. Hey, if no other mailing list worldwide asks
its subscribers to behave like this, and if annoying other subscribers
like this would soon get you expelled from most other mailing lists
worldwide is a sure sign that all others are idiots, isn't it?"
See above. One extra message (the one-liner) -- or at least very few --
is *not* at least doubling the traffic.
and are even adding to this assertion the one (still unproved, mind
you!) that doing what you say causes more messages in subscriber
inboxes that what I do.
Think you've got this one backwards.You're the one asserting my way
would cause more messages -- and I agree, by one (ordinarily) message
per thread initiated by an unsubscribed user, not the "more than double"
you claim. But now we subtract all the meta-messages about copying and
forwarding, and we agree that there are far too many of these. Net
result: fewer messages. Your way definitely causes fewer messages to the
list, I agree -- if no unsub complains about not receiving answers, and
no subscriber objects to getting the messages both ways. (I'll admit my
ignorance as to the "incredibly easy filter" to detect such duplicates;
I looked, and found nothing that seemed relevant. Please enlighten this
idiot about it.)
But I think your way throws out the baby with the bath by also causing
the unsub not to receive responses -- and incidentally requires that
*every* subscriber who responds to *any* message (from subscriber or
not) that starts a thread must remember to do the copy and paste of the
sender's address. How likely is that? No at all, I'd say. Even those of
us who care about this sometimes forget, and are reminded about it by
others. In your approach, that's a response missed by the unsub (but
seen by every subscriber, reassuring them that the question has been
answered). Your name recognition test helps, but it's awfully loose.
You think too much to unsubscribed users and almost nothing to
subscribed one, and this is BAD for OOo. What is more effective and in
the interest of all OOo users, to maximize or minimize the number of
people who feel gratified, not annoyed, by staying susbscribed to
provide as many useful answers as possible?
I'm thinking of both, and trying to minimize list traffic while
maximizing the chance the unsub gets his answer. It appears tome that
you consider the unsub as merely annoying, deserving no answer (if he
doesn't provide a good subject line) or a single answer to his first
post (or maybe more, if others respond to it directly and copy him
rather than responding deeper in the thread).
They also all end up with the unsubs having a way to see whatever
responses apply to their questions, regardless of where in the
threads they appear.
Please deal with the fact that all this "strategy" has accomplished in
the last 5/6 years it has been carried on is to MINIMIZE the number of
useful answers sent from subscribers. Because all you and the others
before you who believe it could ever make sense have accomplished is
to bother away everybody else from staying subscribed.
Your workload from this list would be much smaller if you weren't
actively working to piss off lots of people, including potential
future subscribers. Again, please answer to the "Hey if no other
mailing list worldwide..." question above, before continuing.
Think you'll have a hard time with backing up that "no other mailing
list worldwide" claim! It's pretty hard to find other "apples" to
compare with this one, with its huge scope and its extremely wide range
of user sophistication. I'm very glad you know all of them, and can tell
us how they handle these issues. :-)
Oh, and
did already I mention that what you are suggesting is equal to greatly
increase the number of useless duplicates in the archives, making them
harder to browse, that is less useful, that is increasing the amount
of people who'll send unsubscribed questions to the list?
That would naturally follow from your basic premise that my approach(es)
would "more than double" list traffic -- but I totally disagree with
that premise.
In contrast, what you described (as Reply All, but let's take it as
the manual copying that would actually be required) means the unsub
would get exactly one message -- provided that his subject was
useful, otherwise nothing. If that one message was not an actual
answer, but perhaps asked for additional information so we could
help, as is often the case, and he supplied it, and that led
somebody to respond with an actual answer -- he'd never know
I'll bother with all the possible combinations the day I'm paid to do
it. Right now, doing what I say is a much more effective usage of time
and is much more respectful of other subscribers. You should not
assume that every subscriber will deal with this as if they were paid
help-desk staff. The easy, effective solution to all your worries
above is:
1) do as I say, so you won't annoy other subscribers
I think I'd very much annoy some of them by sending messages to their
private accounts as well as to the list.
2) add whenever you answer to somebody whose name you don't recognize
2/3 lines with the polite version of "in case you aren't
subscribed, remember that you'll only see other answers if you
regularly check the archives at <URL> for a few days, or if you
subscribe to the list and unsubscribe as soon as you get your
answer. Sorry pal, we're doing this for free, you can't expect us
to jump back and forth for you till you're happy"
I don't see a wonderful reduction in list volume this way, though
the alternatives I'm looking at would have a real shot at doing that
It will never work as you hope for the reasons I gave above. The best
you'll obtain will be to remain you, Harold, Gene (IIRC) and a handful
of other equally good willing, but clueless (email-wise only, of
course) people to do all the work alone, in a way that fills the
archives of useless CC messages making them less helpful for the very
kind of people you're trying to reach. Try to go for a way that keeps
the archives as clean (=useful) as possible AND keeps as many people
as possible subscribed to share the support load.
Finally, there is one point when there is no real need to agree
100%. If you feel that deleting without opening all messages without a
clear subject is too much, OK, open them, no problem. Just remember to
never send to subscribers (which means also the archives) extra,
unfilterable copies of messages they already received. And please
remember to always FILL the empty subject line with something
meaningful when replying, so at least the archives will be easier to
search.
Marco
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