On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:11 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull.stephen...@u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote: > Barry Warsaw writes: > > On Aug 14, 2016, at 02:01 PM, Chris Angelico wrote: > > > > >The biggest problem I'm seeing is with digests. Can that feature be > > >flagged off as "DO NOT USE THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ASKING > > >FOR"? So many people seem to select digest mode, then get extremely > > >confused by it. > > "So many"? Of the 5018 posts on this list I've received since Sept > 24, 2015 (some were private replies etc, but only a handful), exactly > three were inappropriate replies to digests. > [chomp details] > I don't think this is anywhere near as damaging to the list as the > practice of top-posting (let alone the bottom-posts, which are more > frequent than reply-to-digest).
It's not just this list, though. I've seen the same phenomenon on other Mailman lists too. I think you're right that top-posting is more of an issue (certainly it's far more prevalent), but it's also a lot harder to solve. > > Yes, we can turn off digests for python-ideas, or any Mailman mailing list. > > > > I was tempted to JFDI, but it would mean that ~25% of list members would no > > longer get messages. That's because 254 out of 979 members are currently > > receiving digests. > > Is this really sufficient reason for eliminating a feature that more > than 1 in 4 subscribers has explicitly chosen? Most of whom never post? > > How about instead adding > > "^Subject:.*Python-Ideas Digest, Vol \d+, Issue \d" > > to the spam filter, and so imposing moderation delay (or even > rejection) on the poster? That would be a decent idea. I was thinking more of the sign-up screen, though. How many of those 25% of subscribers really want digests, and how many of them completely misunderstood this: """Would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?""" and picked "Yes" because they want to receive mail every day, rather than having to go to some web page to read it? My counter-suggestion is to simply remove that option from the front page. Anyone who genuinely wants a digest can go into their settings and request it; Mailman's settings pages are a lot more verbose than a sign-up page can be. The obvious default would then be the sane one. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
