Ryan L. wrote:
interface leaves a bit to be desired (and is slow for anyone not in
Japan it seems…at least for me), but we also have Google G. (but
of course that depends on the gateway for all messages to be
archived.)
Interesting. I’m leery of adopting what may amount to (quasi-) elitists
techniques to reduce the noise (i.e., if they’re not smart enough to
figure this part out, then oh well), but there are real downsides to
making certain behavior nearly frictionless and cost-free.
And asking people to subscribe to a list (which is already available on
the Web via Gmane) is really not a major hurdle.
It may be better to have various read-only list archives for locating
information, but require list membership to post.
I’m not sure what the solution is here, beyond extremely smart,
SPAM-like filtering in our mail clients to cut down on the junk we
have to read. On that note: how do most people on this list cope with
all the messages? Because it seems like reading all of them would be
at least a half-time job (I don’t know, 4 hours or so a day.)
Subject scanning, and seeing who sent the mail. For example, I probably
would have glossed over this very thread, but saw your name, and Eric’s,
so it piqued my interest.
There is no way to read it all; some filtering or folder routing might
help, though I’ve given up on ever expecting people to agree on, and
actually use, consistent, reliable subject tags (witness the subject
lines for Ruby Q. threads).
So I just keep an eye on things and try to catch what I can.
–
James B.
“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally
for machines to execute.”
- H. Abelson and G. Sussman
(in "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs)