"James B. Byrne" <ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca> wrote: > 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. Agreed. People should be _understanding_ of others. I find that 80% of the time when someone complains about someone's posting format, it is not the posting format they are really complaining about, but their target in general -- the posting format is just one thing they want to focus on, in the hope of getting others to join in. I'd rather someone just use a two-word phrase and get it out of their system, than than to make an entire thread about what everyone can disagree on. ;-> You will _never_ hear me complain about the posting format of others. I don't expect others to do anything I want, but in return, I expect others to respect the logic behind my approach. The only time I even bring anything up is when someone feels it necessary to rebuke me on my approach. I've been using my approach for 16 years, starting with NNTP and, now in the days of the web, SMTP with web-based archives. In fact, for lists that use SMTP-to/from-NNTP gateways, Message-ID is the _only_ commonality. Again, it's a subject which a lot of people can just disagree on and talk about forever. Not surprisingly, it's the time when everyone who doesn't like someone else can come out of the woodwork and having something to disagree with them about. Sigh. > I read mailing lists as digests. People need to remember that people who are on digests won't track Message-ID. Or at least the common way digests are generated in text format. Now Mailman _does_ offer MIME encapsulated digests so the original Message-ID and other headers can be tracked. But this format is rather complex for most mail readers. I've found it works very well in Evolution, although I've had mixed results with web-based readers. Hence why most lists don't use it. So before you complain about someone on-list, be considerate that someone might be on the digests. A perfect way would be to ask them _off-list_. And, in general, keep such things off-list in general, because it only adds to the noise (much like I'm doing right now -- yeah, I'm a hypocrite ;-). > We are all infinitely ignorant, So true! > 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. But it's how some people can find "common ground" to complain about someone they don't like, so they indulge a bit too much instead of actually focusing on what they really don't like about the other person. And, frankly, GMail has given a lot of people a whole new avenue. -- Bryan J. Smith | Sent from Yahoo Mail mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org | (please excuse any http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ | missing headers)