At 06:49 PM 6/17/2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I have been subscribing to the digest in order to reduce
the quantity of emails.
Obviously, it's up to each reader, but I've tried digests and they are more
trouble than they are worth. Sure, you get fewer mails. But then you can't
see the subject lines of each mail. To know what's in the digest, you have
to scan the whole thing. The digest is not much less data than the sum of
the individual mails, so download time shouldn't be much of an issue. And
you don't get automatic threading (i.e, correct subject line) if you
respond to a digest. Instead the subject line becomes the name of the digest.
But something that many readers never do which might solve the problem that
leads many to use digests. I set a filter so that all mail from the list
goes into a folder dedicated to that list. I can then see all the mails at
once, I don't have to even look over the text of mails that don't interest
me. I get mail from dozens of mailing lists, I'd go crazy if I had to sort
it all myself. I don't do this, but if I didn't want to keep the mail, I
can delete it all at once,just about as quickly as if it were in a digest.
Again, I don't do this, but if I really don't want to see what an
individual writes, I can also set a filter to trash mail from that
individual to the list (or directly to me, for that matter). I couldn't do
that with a digest without trashing the whole digest.
Learning to use filters, if one doesn't know, is well worth the small effort.
I really can't see a good reason to use digests....
Lots of things can cause mail to get lost.... While it is possible that
something happened with the list server, much more likely something
happened between the server and Mr. Suter's mailbox. But if other list
readers also didn't get those digests....
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