At 8:06 AM -0500 2/5/99, Tom Neff wrote:
> The dialectic Ivan and Chuq bring up - "Better tools!" vs "Better user
> behavior!" - has been around since the beginning, and will probably always
> be around.
Heck, go back into the Usenet arguments, and you'll see me in the
middle of many of those fights a decade or more ago.
Usenet's a great example, by the way. Education (i.e. better user
behavior) has significant limits. All the FAQs and netiquettes and
whatevers in the world only work if users actually use them. And the
fun part is, it's very hard to see how many DO, because generally,
all you hear from are those that don't. The typical usenet group is
inundated with questions answered in the FAQ, but you have no clue
how much MORE inundated you'd be without it. So education works, and
run a statisticalyl significant user survey, you'll find stuff like
that is used a lot and very useful -- but tends to get discounted,
because there's still a high level of noise out there from the naive
and the lusers.
Better tools isn't a complete solution, either, because, frankly, as
you continue to build better mousetraps, you simply evolve better
mice. Um, idiots. you know what I mean.
But by combining the two, you can make great strides. One of the
great weaknesses of most help systems or FAQs is that they generally
boil down to Big Hunks O' Text. Typo a majordomo command, and
majordomo spits out a 10K help file, and invites you to guess which
paragraph is relevant to their problem. that's a real help. My system
traps the most common mistakes and responds with a message that
targets the problem (and the fix). Gee, instead of "guess the
answer", users now know what they did wrong, how to fix it, and my
sites magically have many fewer stupid users all of a sudden...
(better tools and more effective education, together for better user
behavior....)
> Using the Web for purely
> optional control of a list that still gets delivered (in some form per user)
> via traditional email: this is probably an idea whose time has come.
Sure has. Actually, I've been working towards it for about 18 months
now. I want to completely remove the concept of "subscription" to a
"list", especially if that subscription is tied to an e-mail address
instead of a user. Becuse users don't change, but they're email
addresses do, and there's no hell like being subscribed to 18 lists
and have to remember which variant of what address is on which
list.....
> Requiring the Web, plus Java, flash, etc, for ALL aspects, including reading
> messages and the rest of it, is something I'd resist.
The joy of it is, all you need is HTML. The rest is backend magic
like databases and dynamic generation and big email servers. Very
easy for the user, very low-tech necessities as far as end-user
requirements, but the real demands go where they belong, on the
programmers and server side of things.
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano!
