Personally, I'm not a big fan of digests. That being said, roughly a
third of my members use digest on my largest, most active list. I've
made a digest available with every incarnation of my largest list
because subscribers ought to be able to have a choice if a choice is
available, especially in a large, active list. Mine is not the only
list of it's kind (altho it was until this year) and subscribers will
go where they have more choices (all other things equal).
Listserv, imo, handles digests the best of the 4 listserve packages
I've used. My selection of list management software was very
dependent upon how much I could control the digest. I keep the size
down to 25k (for the sake of AOL people), have line limits on
incoming mail so digests don't get reposted in replies, and encourage
subject changes for relevance sake.
All digests are reply-to to the list by default afaik. At least
every digest I've ever dealt with has been. Where else are you going
to reply to? I don't see how it could ever happen for a non-mime
digest reply to go to the individual automatically. But maybe I'm
just being blonde.
I encourage my list members to use a mime compliant email program if
they are going to go digest as LISTSERV detects the mailer type and
assigns digest type accordingly. Obviously, this can't happen with
AOL members, who, imo, are handicapped in almost every aspect of
email. Digests are a poor man's filter for AOL users as best as I
can see.
I have several lists that we trade picture attachments. That's
another thing I like about LISTSERV. I can specify what kind of
attachments will be accepted and strip or reject the rest. The non-
mime digest just sends a pile of junk when attachments are included,
but handles them perfectly in a mime digest. You can forward and
reply to the individual messages in the digests, but you can't delete
them (after all it would change the digest).
BTW, I've been a Pegasus user since 1995 and it's handled every mime
digest type I've gotten perfectly. I get them from Lyris, Listserv,
and Smartlist based listservers
For those people who do not have mime digest capability, there's
always the "digest reader" programs.
I'm not sure what all the complaining is about. We all choose list
management the suits our needs and email programs that we are
comfortable with (and suit our needs). I don't think there is a "one
size fits all" solution in either aspect. I find that Eudora's
resend and filters don't work the way *I* expect them to and Outlook
is too virulent to use other than for teaching purposes. I used PINE
to manage one of my lists, but few ISP's allow shell access any
longer. I keep them all around so that I can help educate my
subscribers.
Chuq, you've been so quiet. Uncharacteristic of you.
Amy Stinson
Site Maintainer
http://www.listhost.com/lists/index.html
