Hi all,
I do not know if this is the same as discussed now on the users list about "List Id". But all my users from all lists are complaining since i upgraded to B4/B4+ .
The Short list description is placed at every outgoing mail at the TO: field.
If the short list desciption is: "Welcome at this fine list" (You can see this at the /listinfo/ web page) Then all mail looks like this:
From : Danny Terweij To: Welcome at this fine list
How to stop this or how to get back what it was before B4 version?
Danny Terweij.
To All
We have had a nice long debate about changing the To: line. What sees to be forgotten is that our lists serve PEOPLE and people who, by and large, have little experience with lists. What seems to be clear to the experts here can be absolutely confusing to the members of our lists. (I have 3800 members on various prostate cancer lists so it tends to be old men.)
When I send an email I assume it goes out the way I sent it. When I reply to an email from a list I expect the email to go to the place I received it from - the list for example. It seems to me that this change breaks both of these expectations. For example if I want to reply to this list and I click "Reply To All:" it puts the name of the sender in the To: line and the name of the list in the CC line. This is exactly the opposite that common sense would tell you to do. Now to make it go to the list, logically I remove the individual name in To: and drag the name from the CC line to the To: line. This seems very backward - why would I want ever to send to both and give that member two copies of the same post. Not logical.
ON LSoft the To: line shows the group name - THAT IS WHERE I SEND THE POST. Here is where it can become confusing - in my case when I send a post I put only the List name in the To: field and all the other names in the CC field. This is logical to me and works very well. However that is not done by most of the members. They put everyone's name in the To: field (wish I could restrict that to one name). Now if you really wanted to help the members - one might consider the list name always in the To: field and all other names in the CC field.
Sorting is another problem. I have used LSoft for 4 years and the same for Yahoo. I find that they are much easier to sort than is Mailman using Outlook 2000. I am yet to find some ways of sorting some of the messages I receive as owner.
Why can't the List ID contain only the name of the list and not the other material. Easy sort.
I don't know if I am right or wrong but what I am trying to say is that the experts on this list seem to be arguing semantics and not real life use of the list by the members. For me and my old men - KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid .
Don
On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Don Cooley wrote:
We have had a nice long debate about changing the To: line. What sees to be forgotten is that our lists serve PEOPLE and people who, by and large, have little experience with lists. What seems to be clear to the experts here can be absolutely confusing to the members of our lists. (I have 3800 members on various prostate cancer lists so it tends to be old men.)
Thank you! This is exactly the case. While there are lots of theoretical and philosophical reasons to put the actual recipient into the To: field, end-users have a hard enough time understanding the difference between "reply" and "reply to all," let alone "something that was sent to them," vs. "something that was sent to a list, but marked as though it was sent to them."
When I send an email I assume it goes out the way I sent it.
... without alteration of existing header data. Quoting RFC 821:
| Notice that the forward-path and reverse-path appear in |
| the SMTP commands and replies, but not necessarily in the |
| message. That is, there is no need for these paths and |
| especially this syntax to appear in the "To:" , "From:", |
| "CC:", etc. fields of the message header. |
Why can't the List ID contain only the name of the list and not the other material. Easy sort.
We advise our users to sort on the X-BeenThere: or List-Id: headers. As of yet I haven't had a user complain that this wasn't possible, but I'm not up to date with the GUI mail clients so I don't know what limitations they may have.
Here's my suggestion, valued at what y'all paid to receive it: Since the role of the list package is to redirect the mail to subscribers, wouldn't addition of a "Resent-To:" header be more appropriate than munging of an otherwise accurate To: header?
-CA
"DC" == Don Cooley <cooleydd@pacbell.net> writes:
DC> We have had a nice long debate about changing the To: line.
I think we can stop the debate now. I am going to back this change out for MM2.1 and we can re-address it for later versions. I'll leave the code commented out so anybody who wants the behavior shouldn't find it too hard to re-enable.
DC> Why can't the List ID contain only the name of the list and
DC> not the other material. Easy sort.
Because List-ID format is defined by an RFC. We would need a /really/ good reason to break an internet standard, and I don't think we have one for this header.
-Barry
On Wednesday, October 30, 2002, at 08:26 AM, Don Cooley wrote:
What sees to be forgotten is that our lists serve PEOPLE and people who, by and large, have little experience with lists. What seems to be clear to the experts here can be absolutely confusing to the members of our lists. (I have 3800 members on various prostate cancer lists so it tends to be old men.)
excuse me for being offended, but...
What gives you the right to claim that because you don't like our decisions, the folks involved in these decisions haven't considered the needs of the user? And what gives you the authority to speak for "the users" whatever in the hell that is? your 3800 members?
if we're speaking from the size of our user-bases, the sites I run are larger than yours by about a factor of 25x. I've been running and building stuff like this for 20 years now.
Why do you think you're suddenly more qualified than myself, or JC, or Barry, or the folks who's spent the last year or so sweating out these details trying to get 2.0 to 2.1? I find your attitude really arrogant here, Don.
Disagree with us? fine. want to persuade us? great. In case you haven't noticed, we've been sitting here listening and thinking over what people have been saying. But to pull out this "I am the mystical master, and I'm channelling the REAL OPINIONS of the USERS, and you ivory tower creeps just don't get it" -- I'm offended. you just really screwed the chances of you convincing me of your position with this crap.
When I send an email I assume it goes out the way I sent it.
good for you. wanna know what the TYPICAL user wants? He wants things to work the way they expect it. one reason the headers got re-arranged is because when people do things like Bcc: the list, or re-arrange to and Cc and stuff, or start throwing reply-tos on things, or anything other than the 'default' behaviors, stuff doesn't act as expected for these typical users, and they don't have a chance to understand why. By regularlizing the headers, one reason to do it was to FIX THINGS FOR THE USERS -- by making sure that when they take an action, it does what THEY expect it to do, not what people who muck around with headers like you try to force them to do.
In other words, we're protecting the typical user from the non-typical user, whether they're doign something fancy because they like it, or because they're a jerk and trying to play games with the people on the list. By standardizing how the headers are sent out, the list server creates a standard, consistent interaction with users, and gets rid of the random chaos that shows up today when folks play with the headers.
don't try to pull this "i really know the users" crap on me. I've spent more time talking to users about how lists ought to run in my career than most people on this list will ever spend on ANYTHING having to do with e-mail. You don't have a clue what users really want, and I don't appreciate the way you're trying to foist off your personal agenda through these "users".
Thank you for deciding what the right answer is BEFORE studying the issue, and then not listening to any data that doesn't fit your idea of how things ought to be. Fortunately, the mailman developers aren't like that.
Now I'm going to go shut up and get real work done, before I say something really inflammatory.
Feel free to take a return shot at me. you've earned one, and I'm dropping it after this rant. we now return the list to it's normal operations... (sorry, barry...)
-- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/
The first rule of holes: If you are in one, stop digging.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
participants (5)
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barry@python.org
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Christopher Allen [BigFatPipe.Net]
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Chuq Von Rospach
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Danny Terweij
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Don Cooley