[SLUG] Mailing Lists!

[Gavin Baker]

Hi Mark,

On Sat, 2003-08-23 at 13:47, Mark Feather wrote:
> Now you know why  i hate Mailing lists, you never know where you are, top,
> bottom, middle, who's who, when why and how.  What's it all about, who
> started first, who was last........Fcuk it now i'm lost!

All modern clients I know of (except the current version of OSX "Mail")
show mail in it's natural threaded format, ie.

initial post
           |- mail 1
           |- mail 2
           |- mail 3
                   |- mail 4
                   |- mail 5

where mails 1,2 and 3 are replies to the initial post and mails 4 and 5
are replies to mail 3 etc. This is a logical and ordered way to
represent a group discussion. It mirrors the way conversations take
place. It's easily navigable. It's easy to see who is replying to who's
mail. It's easy to point someone to a previous discussion on a subject,
you can just point them to the single thread rather than to lots of
separate mails. It solves all the things you pointed out above as to why
you hate mailing lists. 

> Where do you add your bit and when you do contribute you get a kicked in the
> teeth and your head caved in!
>
> They are CRAP!
> 
> Siht! i've broken the thread again!

There aren't any rules about how to post but there are unwritten best
practises that have evolved since the beginning of this email thing
started, but threads keep things neat and tidy, especially in a
discussion that consist of more than a few emails.

Perhaps it's time to ditch Outlook Express and try a different mail
client :)

Both mozilla-mail and opera run on Windows and handle mail/mailing lists
perfectly.

Gav

-- 
Gavin Baker <gav at supercowpowers.org>