[Summit] Please trim pests

[Frank Pari]

This is the nerdiest diatribe on first world problems I have ever seen!
 Has life really become so mundane that we are all no reduced to fighting
over how we want others to respond to an email thread?  I mean, really,
email is an elderly technology which is being cattle prodded into
performing collaborative task that it was never really designed for.  Maybe
we should all switch to using a forum or something more like Facebook
rather than whining about how the technology we are using can't easily do
what we want... But, then, I'm sure we find something else to nitpick about
rather than just getting things done.

Drop the microwave mentality and move on with life!
http://lifehacker.com/re-train-your-brain-to-overcome-microwave-mentality-1323754878

-F

On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Emlyn Addison <noisyblocks at gmail.com>wrote:

> I agree entirely. To clarify: the digest-vs-individual-emails thing had
> never occurred to me as the cause of all this back-and-forth until you just
> brought it up. Gmail would handle individual incoming emails very tidily,
> and so there'd be no reason to use the digest...unless you wanted to avoid
> pings all day.
>
> In retrospect, it must certainly have seemed like some were "waging an
> endless campaign" if you weren't already used to using the digest format
> and were seeing the garbage printed inline; this would explain all the
> head-scratching...
>
> Everyone got that? Don't use the digest if you don't want more work.
>
> Emlyn
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Jeffrey Cavanaugh <jeff at cavanaugh.org>wrote:
>
>> So, what level of compliance do you have?  If I go through the trouble of
>> editing my posts, will it make a difference?  Or is it a futile gesture? We
>> just heard from 2 users who didn't seem to have any intention of post
>> trimming, and I'm sure there are many more.
>>
>> The point I am trying to illustrate that this is all largely a matter of
>> your point of view. I see lots of self-interested *opinions* being
>> offered as *fact*: "it's common courtesy" and so forth.
>>
>> I'm in the software business, and in my opinion, the "digest" feature is
>> a terrible feature. It requires its users to wage a continuous campaign to
>> try to re-educate users of more prevalent systems to do something that is
>> counter-intuitive to them.  Not to mention that digest users are frequently
>> discourteous and don't edit the subject line, and in fact I do not read any
>> e-mails with the default digest subject line.
>>
>> Seriously, think of the logic here - "I tried this feature, I don't like
>> that it puts all this extra info in there, so instead of discontinuing use
>> of the feature, I will wage an endless campaign to get people to do extra
>> work to accommodate my desire to use this feature that I don't like." What
>> you really want is a digest type feature that clips out all the extra
>> stuff, but it doesn't exist, sorry, that's just how it is, those are your
>> choices.  I don't think you will ever get a level of compliance on
>> post-editing that will make the digest feature work the way you want it to.
>>  It would be so much easier if the digest simple cleaned that stuff up.
>>
>> It's sort of like the bump-outs - it can be an interesting discussion,
>> and some of them have worked out better than others, but I don't think
>> we're going to rip them out (or that anyone is advocating we spend money on
>> that), so maybe we should talk about how to make them work better.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Emlyn Addison <noisyblocks at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> So all this is a matter of how the user chooses to receive Summit
>>> emails? Either it's neat-and-tidy emails all day, one at a time, or it's a
>>> mess of emails in a single digest? No wonder we don't know what each other
>>> is talking about.
>>>
>>> I do use a 21st century mail client, I do use the digest and I do trim
>>> my posts. But I guess the short of your missive is: don't use the digest
>>> format and, if you do, don't complain.
>>>
>>> A good way to avoid complaining about people filling up your inbox with
>>> complaints is to not use email. Just deal.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As I've said before, trimming prior messages is not a "common courtesy"
>>>>  in
>>>> fact, clearly folks don't even know what you are talking about. I'm so
>>>> tired of seeing "please trim posts!" everywhere and everyone just
>>>> assumes
>>>> that everyone else a) knows what they mean and b) agrees.
>>>>
>>>> As far as I know, this is an issue for folks who use the digest.  All
>>>> the
>>>> forwards clog up the digest.  Those of us who use a 21st century mail
>>>> client and don't use the digest, wouldn't even see the prior comments.
>>>>  Most people these day use conversation view.  Digest users mess up the
>>>> conversation view when they fail to edit the subject, which defaults to
>>>> something "digest", or if they edit it to different things - the items
>>>> on
>>>> the same subject don't show up in the same conversation because the
>>>> subjects are not EXACTLY the same.
>>>>
>>>> So it seems there are 2 different ways of using the list that have some
>>>> degree of inherent conflict with each other.  Frankly, I think people
>>>> are
>>>> unfairly taking up my inbox space by complaining about it.  Just deal.
>>>>
>>>> Please enjoy the prior thread below for your reference:
>>>>
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Summit mailing list
>>> Summit at sna.providence.ri.us
>>> http://sna.providence.ri.us/mailman/listinfo/summit_sna.providence.ri.us
>>> SNA Website: http://sna.providence.ri.us/
>>>
>>
>>
>
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>
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