On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 07:08:11PM +0000, Tony's unattended mail wrote: > On 2012-11-30, Rich Kulawiec <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have heard myriad arguments advanced for abandoning or modifying > > email etiquette over the past ten, twenty, thirty years. None of > > them have ever been accompanied by a convincing rationale that > > demonstrates why the proposed changes are substantive improvements > > that quantitatively and qualitatively improve the use of email as a > > communications medium. > > Failing to be convinced can be due to meritless claims, or it can be > well-grounded claims that are given to a stubborn opponent who resists > change. When an argument is irrefuted, or refuted purely with > fallacious logic, it's certainly the the latter case. And this is > what has been demonstrated here.
I agree; good reasons for the existing standards have been put forth. Arguments against those standards and said reasons have contained fallacious logic. > > Nearly all of them have been proposed by people of limited and brief > > experience, people without substantial experience in large and > > diverse environments, people who do not understand how email > > actually works, people who do not grasp the scalability issues > > involved, people who have never read the RFCs, people who have never > > used more than one email client or operating system, people who make > > the serious mistake of reading their email with a web browser, > > This is a false cause fallacy. False. This is not a statement of cause, and not even an attempt at one. It is an observation of fact, with an *implied* consequence: people with inadequate experience are unlikely to be qualified to make useful suggestions. > Advocates on either side could make this same errors in judgement, Absolutely. However the advantage which those on the side of the established standards have is that their position is, almost universally, backed by those who actually do have the knowledge and experience to know better. > > people who simply want to do what they want to do because their > > world view is myopic and selfish, > > Actually it's quite the contrary. Now before going into that, first > you should understand a proper tool can make composition equally > simple, regardless of wrapping style. This point is irrelevant, because the craftsman can use only the tools available to him. Or he can invent his own; except that if he needs someone else to be able to work with the product of his labor, then he needs to make certain his product is capable of being used by the tools they want to use. Otherwise he may find himself sitting alone in his workshop with a product no one wants (SEE BELOW). There are literally thousands of tools exist for handling e-mail, and NONE OF THEM WORK THE WAY YOU WANT. So not only to you need to establish a new standard, but you need to update all the existing tools to support it. As a practical matter, the benefit of whatever difference in format you're about to suggest is vastly outweighed by the monumental amount of work required to make the world support it (AND SEE BELOW). Any of the points you make which follow from this one are therefore invalid as a practical fact, regardless of whether they may be correct from the perspective of formal logic. > > people who have never bothered to learn and understand proper email > > etiquette, > > Etiquette varies based on the domain (e.g. where you are). However for mailing lists, the 72-character line wrap and conversational quoting are fairly universal, for previously discussed good reason. > > What we do not see are any of them advancing cogent, carefully-made > > arguments for change. That is NOT to say such arguments don't exist: > > perhaps they do. Perhaps there are changes that *should* be made. > > Then you have not been paying attention. The point was already made > on this list just a few days ago to use an unambiguous syntax that > gives each reader the freedom to choose how wide their text is (as > opposed to being force-fed the authors choice), and this point remains > irrefuted. I just refuted it. > Detail on how to completely remove all traces of ambiguity was > given, and so far uncountered. Only because I got sick of replying to your nonsense. It's incompatible with existing tools. It is unlikely to be adopted *by anyone*, because it does not provide a sufficiently substantial benefit to warrant the monumental effort to be implemented globally. It must additionally be an entirely separate format than used by any of the existing plain text formats, as otherwise if you attempt to use it as one of the existing standards, it will immediately break ALL EXISTING TOOLS. That is itself a hindrance to adoption. In point of fact, we already have such a format, and it's even supported by Mutt. It's called enriched text, corresponding to a MIME type of "text/enriched", and is used by VIRTUALLY NO ONE. That fact is unfortunate -- it's quite good; but the reason is quite reasonable. As a practical matter, those that find themselves wanting what enriched text provides JUST USE HTML. And the only reason HTML is a problem is because certain tools don't support it very well... But the number of such tools is vastly outweighed by the number of tools that don't support neither your pet format, nor enriched text. So, if you want to fix this problem, by far the path of least resistance is to update the tools that don't handle HTML well to do so. Which, for what it's worth, is what I've been advocating for Mutt for several years now. Feel refuted yet? -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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