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

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Mon, 2017-03-13 at 18:01 -0400, George Reeke wrote:
> On Mon, 2017-03-13 at 21:56 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>
> > If a lot of users actually should use digest, then digest shouldn't be
> > dropped. If just a few users should actually use digest, it doesn't
> > make sense to keep it, as long as at least not one person really needs
> > digest for a good reason, that isn't related to a habit.
>
> What you call a "habit" other people may consider a "workflow"
> carefully developed over years of experience trying alternatives.
> I call that a good reason.

But if that workflow is disrupting and causing problems for the
majority of people, then it's a problem.
I call that selfish.

The bottom line is that, personally, I have no opinion on how other
people choose to deal with something as, lets face it, trivial as a
mailing list. The reason why it is an issue is because people reply to
the digest breaking other people's "workflow"; there are mechanisms in
place to mitigate this using the MIME digest and the message handling
menu at the top of every message in the digest - but that menu is an
Evolution thing and not inherent in the construct of the digest, so if
someone uses a mailer other than Evolution (shock horror), then that
facility won't be available to them.

As far as I can see there is no technical reason to prefer digests, and
lots of technical reasons to dislike them - thus it is purely down to
preference. That is fine, choice is good and all that. But at what
point does a few people's preferences trump everything else?

Personally I would head towards removing digests, but it's not
something I'm going to loose sleep over. But I too would like some
digest users to speak up - there's certainly the possibility that we
have become too blinkered and can't see the killer use case for
digests.

If digests are kept, are other mitigations possible. Like:

    Is there a way to enforce mime digests?

    And is there a way to make the boilerplate at the top of the digest
    more "robust" on the issue of replying to a digest?

    Is it possible to use References: headers to send all digest replies
    to moderation?

    Is it technically possible to remove the ability to turn on digests,
    but allow current users to keep receiving them?

P.