[Mailman-Developers] Re: GET vs POST (was Re: subscription confirmations)

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 08:27:15AM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> You have to step back and stop thinking that the people using these systems
> are (a) computer people, (b) think like you do, and [c] actually understand
> how these systems work and can guess what it takes to jump through your
> hoops. They don't. Every chance you give them to get it wrong, some will.
> Not everyone is a geek (or wants to be), not everyone is an
> english-first-language speaker, not everyone has experience in mail lists,
> not everyone can easily read instructions and translate them into a
> requested action. They need handholding, not because their stupid, but
> because we've done a lousy job of building systems that don't require them
> to be geeks, and then we blame THEM for not being geeks.

I wish to ... what's the opposite of concur? :-) with your learned
opinion on this specific point, Chuq.

I'm afraid there *are* *lots* of people on the internet for whom
"stupid" is not an epithet, but merely descriptive.  They really are.
They won't, don't or can't read, think, and understand things.

Things as simple as "please click this button to confirm that you want
to be added to this list.  If you don't, you don't need to do anything
at all".  Which is, is it not, what we were talking about in the first
place...

I'm sorry, but when it gets that simple, I can't attribute it to
ignorance, or lach of technical inclination.  It is just stupidity.

We asked for it.  We're getting it.

"So easy to use, it's no *wonder* the Internet is going to hell!"

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 804 5015

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