Re: [Mailman-Developers] Re: Future of pipermail?
On Tue, 21 Nov 2000 23:09:55 -0800 Chuq Von Rospach chuqui@plaidworks.com wrote:
At 10:58 PM -0800 11/21/00, J C Lawrence wrote:
I've spent considerable time thinking about this and believe it is to the lists' advantage in this case to hold firm.
you'll lose. AOL is the first to make this mandatory for their users, but users want these features. And besides, AOL is the 800 pound gorilla, and it's eating its lunch on your fence. Do you really think they're going to change back before your fence collapses under it?
No, but I also realise that AOL actually is't sitting on my fence. They are sitting on other people's fence to be sure but their presence in my neighborhood is small enough to be noise.
Aside: Less than 5% of my members are from AOL. Less than 1% of my semi-regular posters are from AOL. The impact here (for me) is quite small.
lucky you. you're not typical then, not given the size of AOL.
Precisely.
But -- it's a losing battle, JC. AOL is the first. It won't be the only. My numbers show me that not only do ~90% of mail users have support for MIME email (stylized text, html, etc.), but most of them want to use it. And they don't like having to go through gyrations to avoid it -- and most have no clue how, and don't want to.
While I agree (with some distaste), those gyrations have shown themselves to have positive value for me. FWIW I also enforce quoting style (new text below quote), quoting formats (must have leading quote characters on quoted lines), correct attributions for all quoted text, etc, which are leading directly against AOL, MSN et al, but which have also helped define the value I offer.
It a per-case specific question, not suitable for the general case.
t few people are in that kind of sellers market....
Too true.
-- J C Lawrence claw@kanga.nu ---------(*) : http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ --=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
At 11:22 PM -0800 11/21/00, J C Lawrence wrote:
While I agree (with some distaste), those gyrations have shown themselves to have positive value for me.
short term. I had the same general attitude for a while, and did pretty much teh same thing, and found that over time, it basically killed my site through isolation and stagnation. I served a given population very well, but found that all I did was drive off fresh blood, and the existing population stopped growing, stagnated and started shrinking as old members moved on and weren't replaced.
Which, if it sounds like USENET today, well, oyu're right. USENET is doing the same thing, but on a hugely massive scale. I'm still working to recover what I feel is an essential vitality in my lists and get back into growth mode.
But we're so far off anything relevant to Mailman issues it's insane, so I won't push this one further on these lists, but audience management is tricky, and even things you think are working my bite you in the butt when you least expect it. Once you set the expectation of exclusionism on your site, it's a real bitch to change back....
-- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
The vet said it was behavioral, but I prefer to think of it as genetic. It cuts down on the liability -- Get Fuzzy
participants (2)
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Chuq Von Rospach
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J C Lawrence