[Klug-general] The Problems with EMail (Re: Talk at the next meet)

[Margot]

J D Freeman wrote:
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> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:34:26AM +0000, Peter Childs wrote:
>> >From what I can I can work out EMail has (at least) four problems,
>>
>> 1. A Use case problem which really means, meaning that email is
>> difficult to sort find and generally organise (What people have been
>> discussing...
> 
> One of the main isssues of have with email is that people don't
> understand enough of the technology behind it, they don't understand
> enough of the concepts. They don't know that there is an In-Reply-To:
> header. Meaning that they start a new thread which gets sorted
> seperately, when they infact meant to reply to a previous email. Email's
> main improvement over snail mail is the fact that you can maintain
> emails as a collected serious of statements. The In-Reply-To: header is
> a key part of this. It is hidden from 99% of all users. It also makes
> for clouding of the information and disjointed threads. In short, don't
> start a new thread, hit reply instead.
> 

Many of the people I correspond with via email are inexperienced 
users, and the opposite problem seems more common - people starting 
a new conversation by replying to an earlier, completely unrelated 
email instead of starting a new thread. Sometimes they don't even 
bother to change the subject line!

I'm so glad that Thunderbird gives me the choice in each mail folder 
to sort threaded or unthreaded.

-- 
Margot