On Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:29:00 -0500 (EST), Joshua Baker-LePain jlb17@duke.edu wrote:
I'm sorry, but making decisions based on Stupid User Tricks is about the worst policy I can imagine. That way lies madness.
No, where lies madness is in the self-centred way in which some people make demands of others to alter innocuous behaviour so that the data requirements of some MUA or other, that may or may not support generally accepted conventions , that may or may not be suitably configured, might be satisfied.
I read mailing lists as digests. Message threading is of no use to me outside of threaded web archives, that I seldom use in such fashion. Neither is the subject content of much significance beyond keying me as to whether some section of a digest may be of particular interest. This is not to say that these features have no value, only that my circumstances realize little any from them. However, I have been taken to task nonetheless, because my personal preferences do not meet with the approval of some. It is this presumption that irritates me.
I am not a member of this list simply to ease the administrative burdens that some people create for themselves. I seek information and informed opinion on technical issues related to the equipment I am responsible for and the vocation I profess, not quasi-religious debates on the morality of certain widely held but hardly universal conventions. I sometimes (rarely) am in the possession of a piece of information that may prove helpful to another, and so I offer on occasion. However, in the main this list is my way of reaching beyond my own ignorance. Usually I am in the position of supplicant and I have found the people on this list generally as helpful and usually as well informed as other lists that I frequent.
But I am concerned about the general tenor of some of the discussions here and how these may lead to ill-feeling in some and a disinclination to actively participate in others. We are all infinitely ignorant, it is just that some of us possess a predisposition to stay within that which we find familiar and others find it easier to take adventures.
Neither tendency is good or bad, they are just personal preferences. It would be more comfortable for the list membership, and improve the decorum of the messages considerably, if people from one camp or the other, and the many of us that straddle both albeit on different issues, displayed a willingness to accommodate the other side and recognize that there are many important reasons, not all of which we may agree with, why someone chooses to do things a certain way.
Complaining about people's email habits, particularly in public, where the content is not the issue strikes me as pointless, self- indulgent in the extreme, and reflects most poorly on the personality of the complainant.
Sincerely, Jim
-- *** e-mail is not a secure channel *** mailto:byrnejb.<token>@harte-lyne.ca James B. Byrne Harte & Lyne Limited vox: +1 905 561 1241 9 Brockley Drive fax: +1 905 561 0757 Hamilton, Ontario <token> = hal Canada L8E 3C3