Re: [Evolution] Sig placement

[Sam Mason <sam samason me uk>]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 04:26:04PM +0000, Art Alexion wrote:
> One of my roles is sharing in Exchange administration here.  We limit
> people to 500 MB on the server.  We have little success in convincing
> people that email data stores are not file systems or document
> management systems.

We have similar limits and I have tended to pull all mail straight off
the servers because I see little reason in distinguishing email from
"file systems or document management systems"!

Then again, I've never had to run a large email system so don't know the
pain you feel.

> For me, the best reason to quote
> bottom or interleaved, is to encourage the sender to look at what she is
> quoting and trim what isn't needed.

Really? I'd contend that for most people, most of the time, it's a waste
of time.

I'd guess that most of the time people can track the email conversations
they're involved in.  It's only the few geeks in mailing lists where
lots of people are involved in lots of conversations where it becomes
worth while to learn about "proper" quoting.  Once somebody has learnt
how to do this then they'll do this most places.  Sounds like a bimodal
Nash equilibrium to me; if a small number of your common correspondences
top-post then it's going to be "better" to top-post (no point wasting
your time quoting "properly" if nobody else bothers), if a large number
of your common correspondences quote "properly" then it's worth spending
the time because everybody else is.  Then again, I'm not very well
versed on game theory so that could all be wrong!

Breaking out of an equilibrium is hard in a large population--group
"momentum", laziness and other factors tend to come into play.  I think
this is what I was saying informally with my car example

> Thanks for that.  Not only did Dirksen possibly not say it, but I even
> had my mid-1960s Republicans mixed up.  No matter who said, it, it
> remains one of my favorite lines.  Honest mistake, I guess, I was 11
> years old at the time.

No probs!  I'm sure I've done the same far too often myself :)

-- 
  Sam  http://samason.me.uk/