[sclug] TopPosting Was: Helping others into FOSS/Linux

[Darren Davison]

On Wed, May 4, 2005 10:58, Patrick said:

> MS Bob died on contact with users as did Smart Tags and Channels in
> Internet Explorer.  Remember Hailstorm? The original .Net passport? Push
> technology?  Users still make the key decision "Will I bother to use
> this or not?" and if they choose not to, MS or any other developer is
> forced to change design in order to get thier product used.

In those cases I agree with you that the end user drives the design, but
things like IE channels and early push technologies weren't central to the
core requirement of being able to browse the web.  Web pages could still be
viewed if you didn't use those features.  The problem here I think is that the
email feature is intrinsic.  When composing an email, the average user sees no
choice but to use the editor and subsequently just uses it in whatever format
it is presented.

When commercial vendors always positioned the cursor below quoted text, many
users of those clients would just type responses there.  Eudora and Pegasus
did this IIRC.  This caused as much consternation because few people trimmed
the quoting, resulting in excessive scrolling to get the response to the
original text.  Hence why selective quoting has to go hand in hand with the
logical positioning of the reply.  There's no simple answer - you can't create
an email client that trims the quoting in a reply just how you need it, and
you can't police someone in producing a free-form reply that meets some
standard.  That's why an etiquette was agreed by the community for the benefit
of the community.

> Because its easy.

for the person composing the mail yes - absolutely no argument at all - it
would be easier for me too and I'd spend less time writing email.  But that
person is trying to participate in a community and basically saying "I can't
be bothered to expend a little effort to make it easier for you.  I don't care
if it costs you more that I do it this way."  That's what seems strange to me.


-- 
Darren Davison
Public Key: 0xDD356B0D