When I wrote,
T> My guess is that, if someone has never used an email client except AOL's,
T> it would be easier to instruct such a person how to use AOL webmail than
T> Netscape's mail client.
I was writing under the premise of a willing tutee. Nonetheless Roger
responded,
K> My guess is that "instruct" is rarely an option. I can't get AOL users
K> to use webmail, let alone Netscape. ... In general, they'll only use
K> the AOL native client, "because that's how email works."
Please understand that in a comparison of the cooking times of beef recipes,
"I know many vegetarians, who won't eat dead cow no matter how quickly it
cooks" is a separate issue and it does not invalidate a statement about
which would get done sooner.
But if you like it better, Stoney, amend the offending word "easier" to
"microscopically less sisyphian."
K> And they don't want junk like
K> filters, either... they want subject prefixes so they can tell what to
K> open and what to delete. *sigh*
On the last (in both senses) list that I ran, I offered subject tags as an
option, rather to the frustration of those who wanted to force their
preference on all members' copies of all posts. In the six years of that
list's lifespan, only one person requested the option as such; all the
others in that mode got there by proposing that tagging be the law of the
list. [I also had to argue the initial group who demanded tags down from
eleven characters to four.] A couple of them were seriously upset when I
said that they could have tags but that untagged subjects would remain the
default; they had set out to impose it on the list and losing their personal
grounds for complaint took the wind out of their sails. Still, I remember
an incident where a member had the setting he wanted (not regarding tags but
something else) -- it was the default, in fact -- but he kept objecting
because I continued to give other members a choice instead of making
everyone toe his line; he truly felt that the other way was morally wrong.
