Comments on: Emails

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:22:32 +0000

I’ve just tried, and it looks like Nia is right - so now I need to change my above request to say “a bit like gmail does”.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 14:39:05 +0000

Nia: I’ve no idea - I just use it for reading mailing lists.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 14:38:25 +0000

Sorry @ndy, maybe I wasn’t clear enough.
A sends and email to B,C and D.
B replies to A, with C and D cc’d
C replies to A, with B and C cc’d. C also adds E to the cc list.
D wants to reply to B’s post. But now he has to manually add E to the cc list. No amount of “learning how to quote” helps deal with these ad-hoc groups, and you should listen to how arrogant you sound!

What everyone wants to do, by default, is reply to everyone involved in the conversation, whether or not they happen to be on the CC list of any particular email.

By: Nia

Nia — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 10:50:22 +0000

Doesn’t Gmail do the first one?

By: @ndy

@ndy — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:44:22 +0000

Well, like I said, if people learn to use eMail *properly* then it’s not a problem. i.e. Understanding what CC is actually for, understanding when to use reply all and when not to and how to quote *properly*. i.e. quoting the correct bit, in the correct context, judicious editing, summaries and deleting of the irrelevant stuff. You’re never going to be able to fix stuff in software that is a symptom of people pressing random buttons on their computer without a clue as to what they’re doing or the subsequent implications. To paraphrase Balmer: Education, education, education! Orphaned replies are a symptom of people not understanding how to quote.
It’s also important to know when to use eMail and when to use something else, such as a mailing list, web forum or usenet. It’s called the right tool for the right job and all the necessary tools are out there and have been for a very long time.

Like you said: If A is in a bar and B and C whisper to A behind D’s back, how in the world is D supposed to participate in the conversation?

OK, all these things involve a bit of effort and a bit of thought, but there’s this thing called entropy and it tends to cause things to decend into chaos unless people put a little bit of effort in. Effort is something that most users cannot be bothered with.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:39:28 +0000

No, the first point isn’t trivial. If A posts, B and C each individually reply to A, how does D quote the conversation so far?

Quoting only works for sequential replies to the latest part of a conversation, which isn’t how life works. Half the time I think quoting is a hinderance to following a conversation, due to having so many orphaned replies.

By: @ndy

@ndy — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 13:22:46 +0000

The first point is trivially solved if people actually used eMail in the way it was intended. (RFC 1855: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html) This includes quoting properly and not top posting. Remember: GIGO.

The second point is a bit harder, but better use of the facilities provided by LDAP (such as address books and global mailing lists) would be help no end.