[Wolves] Notes on the mailing list and the meeting list

[James R. Haigh]

Hello Ron, James, John, all,

On 29/10/15 10:14, Ron Wellsted wrote:
> The meeting list:
> I generally post this to the list on the Monday before the meeting.  The post will include the date, start time, expected end time and location (usually including a link to a marker on OpenStreetMap).  I also update the website (http://wolveslug.org.uk) at the same time.
I particularly appreciate the OpenStreetMap URL (for a location that I haven't been to before) as it is detected directly by OsmAnd which means that if I already have the email downloaded I can view the location in OsmAnd even if Internet access fails me. Yes, it also works with other URLs that encode the geographic coördinates, but still, OSM ftw.! :-D
> There are three (3) sections:
>
> Goes:
> Add your name to this section if it is your intention to to come to the meeting.  If you later discover you can or may not be able to attend the meeting, move your name to the relevant section.
>
> Late/Maybe:
> Add your name here if you are not sure if you will be unable to attend or you will be substantially late to the meeting.
>
> NoGoes:
> Add your name to this section if you have previously indicated that you would attend but are now unable to do so.  You do not need to add your name if you do not intend to attend the meeting.
>
> Surely 3 days notice is enough for you to decide if you intent to come along or not.  Dithering or waiting to see if anyone else will attend before you add your name to the list serves no purpose.
     The problem that I have here is that I'm never sure between Goes and Late/Maybe. I dither until I know how late I'll be (which is usually when I get on the train because I often miss it), and not because I'm waiting for others to put their name on.
     However, there is actually another problem – there have been times in the last few months where I've known for definite that I won't be going. On these occasions, I /still/ didn't put myself under NoGoes as early as I could have, and I regret that, but in those times I was too busy to deal with emails or was without Internet access between the Monday and the Wednesday. Maybe 6 days would be better, i.e. the Thursdays immediately after the Wednesdays that we don't met on (to avoid Adam Sweet from revealing that he's in the Oort cloud again!).
     Aside from that, I'll just try to be a bit more committal and choose Goes even though I may be late. The truth is, I actually almost always fit under /both/ Goes and Late, just not so much Maybe, so it'll be Goes from now on and I'll try to do it earlier and get on the train earlier.
> I cancelled the meeting this week because (based on the list) there was a reasonable chance that I would be the only one there.
     You'd have at least been on your own for a while, unfortunately. :-( I'm late, but I seem to be reliably late. I don't want to be like this forever; I'll get back on top of life soon, I hope.
> A note on the venue:
> I have moved over to Wednesfield as the pub is generally quieter allowing for much easier conversations.  Parking is also much easier (and free).  Past experience has shown that parking in the centre of Wolverhampton becomes almost impossible in the run up to Christmas.
     Yeah, I'm happy with it. It is a bit quieter. The route is pretty easy to find now that I know it – I haven't needed to look at a map since that first time when I got terribly lost. It's not too far, it takes me about 10–15 minutes, though anything further from the station wouldn't be so easy on the bike. I'm not a fan of it being a chain but then pretty much every alternative is some chain or other, so it would be out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak. (Pun intended.)

On 03/11/15 04:49, James Turner wrote:
> The following may be of interest to line wrapping aficionados:
>
> https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt
     That's very interesting. They recognise the problems that I face when I receive most plaintext email. Particularly section 3.2. Embarrassing Line Wrap.
     I've started looking into this. However, unlike merely changing a hidden setting, this could be a while off.
> Although this standard seems to have the potential to make everyone happy I suspect its lofty goals are compromised by incomplete/missing/buggy user agents (for either the sender, receiver or both).
>
> What's Thunderbird like in this regard? Anyone fancy doing a few tests with different combinations of client? Any bug reports/feature requests to be filed?
     So far I've asked on the Mozilla Thunderbird and K-9 Mail IRC channels. I've not yet received a reply about Thunderbird but it's clear that K-9 Mail doesn't currently. I'll try to find more time to investigate it.
> For what it's worth, my preference is to see plain text messages, displayed in a fixed-width font and wrapped at the traditional ~78 characters. Although the window in which the messages are displayed may be considerably wider (e.g. when maximised to full screen) I still prefer this narrower format. I don't like HTML messages.
>
> I appreciate that not everyone shares these same tastes, but (mercifully!) they do align with Wolves LUG mailing list netiquette/style guidance and thus I haven't been flamed.
     Indeed, preferences vary. Hopefully a solution can be sought which solves the various usability problems that different people experience.
> It seems that text lines in SMTP should are supposed to be 1000
> characters or less (specifically 998 printable + CRLF newline) [1]. As
> such perhaps James H. could be negotiated down from using 2.1 billion
> characters per line to a mere 998? We should press for even lower once
> software that correctly implements RFC3676 proliferates. :)
     Hahaha! :-) My lines are long but 2.1 billion was just to be safe, lol! The real reason is that I couldn't be bothered to decide on some arbitrary smaller value. However, I was indeed aware of the 998 character (or bytes?) limit, but I didn't bother to mention it because it hardly ever bothers me. Most of my paragraphs fit within this limit, and even the occasional fixed break doesn't get in the way too much.
     As it happened, in that email, there was 1 paragraph that got fixed-wrapped at the space prior to the limit (ironically between the words ‘hard-wrap’ and ‘breakpoints’!) but I checked (or so I thought) that the email did not have any lines over the limit by sending it to my outbox first (i.e. ‘Send Later’) and none of the lines, including that one, were fixed-wrapped so I assumed that meant they were all below the limit. But when I checked the Pipermail archive after, however, there it was, so clearly Thunderbird doesn't make it compatible with the on-the-wire content transfer encoding until the very last point when I sent it from my outbox.
     I'm not sure what the exact limit is. I did several tests a while back and it seems that Thunderbird only breaks if there's a space. I.e. you can greatly exceed the limit with say 2000 letters, no spaces. I'm not sure why, then, Thunderbird has any limit if clearly the on-the-wire protocol somehow managed to do it. Strange.
     Anyway, I'm really not bothered about exceeding 998 characters. This time I've ensured that all of my paragraphs are below the limit. It's probably a good thing anyway! :-D

On 03/11/15 11:05, John Alexander wrote:
> To be honest I don't think Ron's email was predominantly about netiquette.
> It was unfortunate to have this as the first comment in the email.
     Sorry. I intended to reply to the whole lot, but I saw the netiquette issue as a prerequisite to my other emails to try to bring them inline (pun again), but didn't get round to them. Now at least I have gotten round to the other part of Ron's email.
> Imagine you have a group where Ron knocks out an email about turning up and having a nice social once a fortnight, not much goes on otherwise. Now it's got to a point that most can't even be bothered to turn up to have a drink (be glad breathing is indeed automatic!! :) )).
     I can be bothered. I travel from Shrewsbury for it, and I don't find getting places / getting ready to go out easy at all.
> There is little or no traffic other than this, just think of all that interesting stuff that's going on but no one comments on.
> However the moment "Netiquette" was mentioned we get a vast trail of opinion.
     Actually there are some earlier emails that I wish to reply to that I've not gotten round to.
> Personally I'm not terribly worried about "netiquette" I'm more worried about content and communication amongst members which is sadly lacking. After all with no content "netiquette" is no more than unicorn droppings!!
     These last few months I've hardly written any emails, not just on this list. In fact the majority have been for the meeting attendance lists that Ron or you send. I'm slowly getting over some of the issues that have been dragging me down.

Best regards,
James.
-- 
Sent from Thunderbird on NixOS!
At 2015-10-29Thu10:14, Ron Wellsted wrote the message that is archived at:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/wolves/2015-October/031509.html
At 2015-11-03Tue04:49, James Turner wrote the message that is archived at:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/wolves/2015-November/031519.html
At 2015-11-03Tue11:05, John Alexander wrote the message that is archived at:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/wolves/2015-November/031521.html