[Evolution] Proposal: to eliminate the digest option for the Evolution mailing list

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

Hi all

I'm one of the list moderators for the Evolution list. Occasionally new
users on signing up for the list select the "Digest" option for
receiving list traffic.

What's a Digest?

Digests are an ancient mechanism for batching list messages into a
daily briefing, with a view to reducing the number of deliveries to the
end-user's mailbox. In olden times this could be a significant
advantage since mail was often delivered over slow phone modems using
UUCP protocols, where each message required a protocol handshake
exchange that added overhead and reduced effective bandwidth (think
Hayes 9600 bps and dial-up). Batching made better use of this limited
resource and could save money on phone costs.

Why should we eliminate digests?

   1. I know of no-one who still uses dial-up UUCP for their mail feed.
      Even a basic "always-on" Internet service is orders of magnitude
      faster than a Hayes modem so the savings in protocol overhead are
      insignificant and the savings in cost non-existent.
   2. Users of digests frequently don't fully understand how they work, or
      how to use their MUA to deal with them. A typical error is to reply
      to a digest rather than replying to the specific message *within*
      the digest (something supported by many MUAs, including Evolution,
      as long as the digest is MIME-formatted, which ours is by default).
      The upshot is that the user either a) re-sends the entire digest as
      quoted material in his reply (in pathological cases this could
      happen multiple times with exponentially growing messages), or b)
      attempts to be a good citizen by editing the reply to exclude the
      extraneous material and changing the Subject back to what it should
      be, without realising that this breaks message threading and annoys
      everyone else.
   3. Extra cruft in list handling software and mail clients (MUAs). For
      backwards-compatibility reasons we're probably stuck with these
      costs, but I mention them for completeness.

Why should we keep digests?

   1. Resistance to change.
   2. Nothing else that I'm aware of.

If you have an opinion about this, now is the time to ventilate it. If
you have valid reasons for needing the Evolution list in digest form,
make your voice heard. If no-one speaks up, I'd advocate turning them
off after a suitable warning period.

poc