At 8:26 AM -0500 2/22/99, Nick Simicich wrote:
> That is why a third or more of my users are on digest? The answer
> is that they want to "skim".
Heck. I've seen 90% of my users on digests for some lists.
A lot, I've found, depends on what your default is as much as what people want.
I did some experimentation on this a while back (forced by a massive
system overload condition....) -- we simply did away with individual
message for a subscriber base until we could get enough capacity on
the machine to handle the load.
turned out that 80% of the users used whatever format you gave them.
10% demanded individual messages and switched back, even though I
told them not to. 10% demanded digest.
And I was astounded at the number of people who wrote and thanked me
for inventing this digest thing, even though it'd existed and was in
the documentation all along.
IMHO, there's probably a good argument here for making digest the
default for any mail list, and letting anyone who wants individual
messages switch over, because most folks don't seem to care (and most
when given the choice and allowed to try both by fiat actually
preferred digests, from my admittedly not scientifically rigorous
research). I never followed this up because (a) digest-by-default
isn't the internet standard, and I didn't feel like pushing this
issue, (b) I got enough capacity that I didn't NEED to push the
issue, and (c) I had other fish to fry.
But digests are very popular and serve any number of purposes. I
personally think they're UNDER utilized and need to be improved.
Good, MIME digests will go a long way towards fixing the problems we
see in Majordomo 1, and better handling of table of contents (with
hot links, for instance) will make them even better. but they're far
from dead. If anything, admins simply have thrown them against the
wall and seen who they stick to, instead of taking proper advantage
of them.
--
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!
