[Mailman-Users] Gmail "features"

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Brad Knowles writes:

 > I really don't think that this is a disk storage issue, I think
 > this is much more likely to be a wrong-headed idea that this kind
 > of thing will be beneficial to the users -- after all, they know
 > that they sent the message and that copy is sitting in the outbox,
 > so they don't need to have another copy sitting in the inbox.

I agree it's not about disk storage, I think it's just de-duplication
of the messages that users see.  Back when Canter and Siegel first got
started, we hated spam not because there was so much of it, but
because it was so bloody annoying to see it in every newsgroup we
subscribed to.  I don't see why ordinary users wouldn't feel the same
way (of course one dupe is far less annoying than Green Card lawyers
in every group you read, but if you get a lot of them, the annoyance
level would build up).

I disagree that it's wrongheaded, if Gmail is going to always do
de-duplication with one algorithm.  Gmail always stores the mail you
sent, as you sent it.  It is not necessarily the case that it will
come back to you in one piece.  After all, our favorite list
distribution software is just bristling with settings determining
what's going to be left of your post once it arrives at the
subscriber's mailbox.  Everybody can understand if they send out a
PNG, it comes back from the list stripped or the mail gets dropped,
and for some reason they don't have a copy of their original.  OTOH,
only a very few would know, let alone care, about missing RFC 2369
headers in a few copies they have locally!

I just think that users ought to have a choice of how de-duping is
done.  Or if it gets done at all.

 > If you think it's worthwhile, you could always try turning on
 > personalization for the list, and then add a footer with unique
 > information per recipient.  That would cause the message-id to be
 > unique as well as the message body, and wouldn't require any new
 > code to be developed.

Small correction: the Message-Id will be the same for all copies.
Mailman cannot go changing those, or it would play hell with all
threading MUAs.

Steve