Chuq wrote:
>
> I'm going to run user surveys and see what they want for my
> discussion lists. if the users are ready for HTML, I'll do it. if
> not, I'll go with demime as well. Too many users have no clue WHAT's
> coming out the back end of their mail clients, so telling them to
> turn it off is less and less useful and doesn't solve the problem, it
> merely starts the discussion.
True. Although in one case (involving a winmail.dat poster) the
discussion resulted in pointers to a fix and much thanks from the
poster since she had gotten complaints elsewhere about it as well.
In my case, I'm not just interested in how many prefer html versus
don't, my less harm/most good criterion takes more into account actual
functionality than emotional preference. Having to expend a good deal
of effort to read the html email is lack of actual functionality.
Prefering html formatting in my very text-oriented list is just
emotional preference for my list. For example, lets assume that 80%
of the list actually does prefer html versus 20% prefering plain
text. Not giving 80% their preference for html is better than, say,
having 5% of the 20% of the non-html preferers not being able to use
the list at all. The 80% can still use the list as they always have
in a non-html list, while the 5% couldn't reasonably in an
html-enabled list. So, by least harm, most good, a simple yes-no
preference survey doesn't address the issue *for my list*. Especially
since my list has been around over 7 years and many of the original
subscribers are still around and contributing and more likely to be in
that 5% rather than the new 80% which are internet newcomers with the
latest tools.
As it is, very small html posts do get through to my list as is (since
I effectively filter out 95% of html based on size alone) and I'd
guess about half result in one or more complaints to me asking why it
got through and could I fix it.
What would be nice, in addition to using a demime filter for email
distribution, would be to save html versions of the messages for the
list web archives. Seems a shame to throw away the part of the
message that is most suitable for use in a web archive. It could be
done, but would require more work to implement than I have to give at
this point.
On a related note, I made my list much more prominant on my website
and noticed a huge increase in the number of unsuccessful confirmation
attempts. More internet newcomers learned about the list (great!) but
they weren't able to follow the email instructions (not good). I
quickly added a simple cgi that would generate a proper confirmation
email and included the url in each confirmation request. That solved
that problem handily. I haven't gotten an unsuccessful subscribe yet
and the cgi is used about 95% of the time now. The only downside is
that among the new subscribers there is a much higher percentage of
not quite as literate posters, resulting in more incoherent sentences,
comments not on topic, etc. We've also had a number of new valuable
posters as well. Gotta take the bad with the good, I guess. No one
has complained to me about it, though, so maybe its not as bad as I
think it is.
Certainly the internet culture is changing rapidly and I'm struggling
with how to continue to nurture the list-community in the most
accessible, yet convenient to use ways, and without imposing on myself
too much (very important).
--
Michelle Dick [EMAIL PROTECTED] East Palo Alto, CA
