On Fri, Mar 05, 1999 at 10:31:12AM -0500, Christine Burke wrote:
> > I'm sorry, I don't see any reason to make allowances for people who
> > are simultaneously (1) voluntarily signing up to receive large amounts
> > of mail from one or more mailing lists and (2) failing to ensure that they
> > have sufficient software tools and expertise to cope with (1).
>
> Well, I do. You can't expect the average Joe to be able to do some of
> this stuff.
The average Joe who is incapable of correctly handling the torrent of email
that results from the average Joe's actions (i.e. of subscribing to a bunch
of mailing lists) should not do the actions in the first place.
I think this is a pretty straightforward idea: to put it bluntly, if you
can't handle 100+ messages a day, don't sign up for mailing lists which
deliver 100+ messages a day. Or, if you do, then it is up to *you*,
the end user, to ensure that you have appropriate tools to deal with it.
> > Why not? Use fetchmail to grab it, and procmail to filter it. You can
> > still read your mail from anywhere, and procmail is clearly up to the task
> > of filtering/filing it appropriately.
>
> And all this runs on a Windows CE box? Heck, it doesn't even run on Windows.
I don't know or care if it runs on Windows: when I have on my mailing
list manager's hat, the end-user's choice of computing platforms is not
my concern. If the end-user has chosen a computing platform which is
incapable of adequately performing the tasks which the end-user requires
of it, then it is the end-user's responsibility to address the problem.
> > And BTW, I haven't seen any proponent of this scheme (which I consider
> > a bug, not a feature) address these two points: (1) how do you resolve
> > overlap conflicts between the tags -- a problem which will only get
> > worse as more mailing lists are created and (2) if you are filtering
> > on the tag, how do you distinguish mail sent via the mailing list
> > from private mail which contains the same tag (say a private followup
> > to a message sent via a mailing list)?
>
> I think 1) is irrelevant. The chances of one person signing up for two
> lists with overlapping tags it pretty remote.
And you base this on what statistical study, exactly?
Oh, and FYI: It has already happened.
> 2) you should note that I am not actually filtering on the tag.
> Just using it as a visual cue in a long list of messages.
Then why don't you use a mail client that lets you set the visual
cue based on the "To:" line?
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
