[Mailman-Users] Re: BIG FAT MESSY...and the problem with users.

[Fred Craven]

I humbly acknowledge my error.

>On Saturday, December 9, 2000, at 12:59 PM, Fred Craven wrote:
>
>I was happy to notice the little discussion about the how to remove
>the extended headers that came with Mailman 2. Thanks to the response
>I now know what part of the problem is: the programers.
>
>No, the programmers are not the problem: your expectations are. In 
>the open source world, people make software available that they have 
>written for THEIR OWN USAGE available to the public. If it doesn't 
>act like you want it to, PATCH it. If you feel that your patch might 
>be useful to others, then submit it. It sure doesn't mean that the 
>developers are here to answer to YOUR beck and call.

Thus you are correct, and I would never expect the developers here to 
be at my beck and call (I have other developers to do that :). My 
*expectations* are out of place, but I think they are in a good 
place. I am one who, in the end, gets to use the results of open 
source, and I thank all who have worked on for this cause.

I work between programmers and users for a living, and I get this all 
the time. please forgive my sarcasm about programmers. I love you, I 
think you are great, I value your skills. And please suffer me the 
privilege of speaking from a users perspective. From what I have 
read, seen, and experienced: programmers disregard the user's 
experience and needs as much as users disregard the programers needs.

So I, a user, now express a perspective that says an *option* to 
"turn of the extended headers" would be appreciated.

Thank you so much.


>
>It's bad enough that I will get a bunch of
>complaints over the way the digests come as a mass of attachments.
>
>Try setting the digest users to PLAIN. Hey, it makes sense to me 
>(but I'm one of those afflicted programmer-types).

Actually it is set for PLAIN. The complaint that I get is based on 
comparisons to "other" digests where the content of each message is 
put into one continuous email with little breaks between the messages 
(and no headers are included for each message). I informed my users 
that they would have to put up with their format--although, I would 
change it If could.

Fred Craven