Indeed, these technologies have really been around as long as e-mail
itself. However, I tend to believe that there have been no widely
available and easy to use technologies specifically designed to facilitate
e-mail list type discussions. Consider the messes we'd have if we gave
every AOL user procmail.
Eudora, or some other mail client, makes it a little easier to do stuff,
but I think it'd be even nicer if there was a tool especially for mailing
lists. If I see a message that looks interesting, I want to be able to
find out more about who sent it (what other messages, perhaps some
personal background info, etc.) with one click. Likewise, if someone
sounds like a blabbering idiot and I don't care to read their attempts at
posts, I want to be able to ignore them, with one click. To my knowledge,
no program exists to satisfy these sorts of needs.
----------------------
Ken Gourlay
Chain Communications
----------------------
> > If programs were widely available that were designed to make it easy to
> > participate in an e-mail-based discussion -- supporting the user's efforts
> > to keep track of who's who and what we're talking about -- mailing lists
> > would be far more useful.
>
> these tools have existed for a while -- Eudora, Claris eMailer, most
> mail clients do a huge part of what you're asking for, and have. On
> the unix side, there are mailers like Pine, or you can move to
> procmail if you want to get really fancy. This technology actually
> isn't new, unless you use AOL's mail.
