Re: [Evolution] A Digression on Digests

[Nick Jenkins <nickpj gmail com>]

> > > I hope I am complying this time - am really unfamiliar with lists.
> >
> > That's awesome.  You quoted an entire digest message to reply to a
> > thread about why digest messages are obsolete and evil and how we
> > can prevent users from directly replying to them.
> >
> > I hope you're seeing the irony.
>
> +1
>
> Words fail me ...

Oh, it's very ironic. However, in this case, I cannot help but blame the
software, far more than the user. The software makes it very easy to do
the wrong thing (in fact, it makes it trivial, because a reply that
works fine in other contexts, is a violation of etiquette when it comes
to replying to mailing list digests). The software also makes is hard to
do the right thing if you are reading digests (requiring people to start
a new message, not a reply, and make sure it's in text format not HTML,
and manually copy the subject header, and manually add a "Re: ", and
manually copy plus ctrl-shift-v paste the quoted message text above it,
then crop the message, then manually insert the reply inline below the
relevant quoted text). That's a 7-step manual process, and if they do
any of this wrong, we yell at them. And then we're surprised that this
keeps happening?!

If we want to prevent this from happening, to stop having the same
ground-hog day discussion yet again, then "the right thing" should be
easy and it should be the default, and "the wrong thing" should be hard
and should require malicious deliberate intent. We can debate the merits
of digests and whether they should exist, but the fact is that they DO
exist in the real world, and the software should deal with them without
making it easy for users to look bad. *Nobody* wakes up in the morning,
slap their hands together, and goes "today I'm going to publicly violate
group etiquette, whilst displaying my lack of knowledge about mailing
lists, and for kicks I'll make it ironic too!". On the contrary, most
people have a strong drive to fit in and to belong and to understand the
perspectives of other people in a group, because humans are acutely
social creatures.

So the above rant explains why I cannot and do not blame the user, and
in terms of converting that into something constructive specific and
actionable, here are two suggestions:

1) If someone attempts to reply to a mailing list digest, how about a
dialog box that says:

"Replying to a digest is generally a bad idea.
Which message in the digest did you wish to reply to?
1) Subject 1, blah blah
2) subject 2 test test
3) subject of message 3 and so forth"

... and then the user clicks the message that they want to reply to, and
it does the useful stuff like inserting "> " quoting of just that
message, and 80-character line wrapping, and uses text rather than HTML
formatting, and puts the cursor at the end of the message.

2) If someone replies to a mailing list message, and that message has a
"List-unsubscribe:" header, and the message subject is "unsubscribe" or
if the first non-quoted word of message of the body is "unsubscribe",
how about we pop up a dialog box saying:

"You can unsubscribe yourself from this mailing list <a
href="http://link-to-unsubscribe-from-the-list-unsubscribe-header";>at
this website</a>. Are you sure you wish to continue sending this
message? [discard] [continue editing] [send]".


... because until we do those 2 things or something like them, I refuse
the blame users who simply don't know any better, and who do the most
obvious thing. "Be the change you want to see in the world", "make it
easy for your users to kick arse", and all that good stuff.

-- All the best,
Nick.