Karen Lopez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> finally speaks the truth:
> ... My work takes me to many clients sites during the year
> and I get to see how various systems architects/administrators have
> configured their systems for their users. I'm talking about sites
> that have 5000 users who are forced to live with MUA, filter, SMTP,
> network, PC, and other standards over which they have no control, no
> say, and no input. My lists target employees and contractors at these
> sites and I know it would be ridiculous for me to say to these
> s*bscribers "Hey, get a new mail client". They would love to have a
> client that allows filtering, header manipulation, sorting, etc. They
> just can't do it.
This is the same philosophy that drove the development of LISTSERV fourteen
years ago, which is very probably the biggest reason we still have them
around today to discuss maintaining here. Letting all users share
information, even (and SPECIFICALLY) including users stuck in less-than-cool
hardware and software environments over which they have little or no
control, was the highest priority.
Unfortunately, it's been my experience over the years that just as some
users cannot change their mail agent, some administrators cannot grasp or
agree with this egalitarian principle, and will always give you the "well,
the idiots should get a real mailer [as defined this month] or they don't
deserve my list" argument.
Those folks will always be around, and so will those who think like Karen
and me, so the best we can do is to stay focused and not get distracted by
the "get a real mailer" noise when we're working out how to best keep
serving the users.
As for subject munging, I don't really like it on high volume discussion
lists but it can be quite useful on low volume specialty or occasional
lists, where the expectation is that the average member is also on other
lists, and hears from this one relatively infrequently. So again, it
depends on circumstances.
