The new linux-il - a few tips to get you (re)started

[Nadav Har'El]

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009, Shachar Shemesh wrote about "Re: The new linux-il - a few tips to get you (re)started":
> >Would you want to
> >be in a mailing list where a few people get the list's message more quickly
> >then you do (because they're on the CC - Shachar wants this to happen) so
> >whenever you read some thread, it is was already hashed to death by the
> >original poster and one or two others?
> >  
> I should hope that the list is not that slower than the direct email. If 
> it is, then the very time it takes for emails to travel is a potential 
> discussion killer in its own.

But the point is that you also think that the list *is* slower than direct
email. Not because the list server adds some large lag (usually the lag is
pretty small), but because of the lag to *notice* the message in the list's
folder. You say that you want this lag to go down for people who already
participated in this thread. I don't understand why should they get
preferencial treatment, and why on just one thread of what might be an
entire tree of discussion.

> >I strongly feel that mailing lists should have just one mode of 
> >communication:
> >you read a mail on the mailing list, and reply to it to the entire list.
> >  
> It's this "this is the only mode" attitude that I find problematic. 
> Every rule has an exception.

Exceptions should be inconvenient, and the rule should be natural and
convenient. I claim that the rule should be to reply only to the list -
not to the author of the message, not to half a dozen people who happened
to participate on the one thread that you're now responding to (which
might be part of a whole tree of messages that you've read). Doing this
is natural and convenient with reply-to, and next-to-impossible without
it.

> >There is no reason whatsoever to allow people who are not subscribers to
> >get this mail.
> Huh?

That's right. If somebody wants to send a message to the list, he should
make the effort to subscribe first. If he doesn't bother to subscribe and
still posts, I don't care if he never sees the replies. I write replies
for everyone on the list, NOT for one person. This is what a list is all
about.

> > There is no reason whatsoever to cross-post a discussion
> >  
> Cross posting is definitely impolite, but saying "there is no reason" is 
> taking it far too far for my taste.

Again, every time I say "no reason" means in 99% of the cases there is
no reason. Let this 1% case be more complicated. Let's make in the 99% case
natural and convenient to do the right thing.

> > There is no reason whatsoever for anyone to get
> >part of a discussion thread to his main inbox instead of the mailing list
> >folder
> Except I don't see that happening.

Ah? Shachar, if there's a whole tree of a discussion, and you answer to
one message, you'll start getting replies to your message (and replies to
it and so on). But as people continue to respond to messages in other
sections of the tree or even to the same message that you responded to,
you won't get those messages to your inbox. You'll get a very partial view
of the ongoing discussion to your inbox. This is not a theoretical problem -
I see it all the time on linux-il, when I find myself reading answers in
my inbox, only to later notice that actually there are more answers in
the list folder that I haven't noticed.

> >In fact, I see this happening all the time on the corporate email where
> >I work (someone writing an announcement to 100 people, and then one
> >silly person accidentally replies to everyone instead of the announcer).
> >  
> But is that someone hitting the wrong button, or someone being ignorant 
> about what he is doing? Nothing in the world will save us from 
> ignorance, not without making the operation we both agree should be 
> default more difficult.

It is someone who got used to clicking "reply to all" on everything because
just "reply" no longer does the right thing for hardly any case, and then
he used "reply to all" as usual in a case where he shouldn't...

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Saturday, Jan 31 2009, 7 Shevat 5769
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The 3 stages of sex: Tri-weekly, try
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |weekly, try weakly.