[Python-ideas] Clearer communication

[Abe Dillon]

 [Dan Sommers]

> Another point in favor of email clients over web pages is
> that there are many of them, and *you* control the display
> and other preferences rather than whoever wrote the forum
> or owns the server.


There is a tool called the Reddit Enhancement Suite or RES (and probably
others)
That lets you control a great deal of the display and other preferences,
however; I'm not
sure how that control compares to something like Thunderbird.

One thing that's nice about Reddit is you can link to posts, so if you've
already discussed something at length in another thread,
you can simply refer to that discussion.

 [Dan Sommers]

> In an optimal technical discussion, opinions from users
> don't count for anything.  The ideas stand on their own
> merits and research and metrics; users only serve to
> confirm the methodology.


A lot can be said about how an ideal world would work. Ideally, we could
define the meaning of life and good and evil and we wouldn't need this
clumsy system of laws and courts to approximate the whole mess.

I don't think it's that crazy to think that a voting system might
approximate merit a little better than the timestamp on a post.
It's not going to be perfect, but perfect shouldn't be the enemy of better.

On Fri, Feb 1, 2019 at 3:17 PM Dan Sommers <
2QdxY4RzWzUUiLuE at potatochowder.com> wrote:

> On 2/1/19 2:58 PM, Abe Dillon wrote:
> > [Dan Sommers]
> >
> >> A mailing list is not a feed... Dan, a decades and decades long fan of
> >> mailing lists and real email clients.
> >
> >
> > I'm only familiar with Gmail which keeps reply chains coherent and moves
> > each chain to the top of my "forums" tab based on who responded last.
> > I haven't explored the various email clients available, can you suggest
> one?
>
> I used mutt for a long time, and then claws-mail, and now
> thunderbird.  They all met my needs, although I did give
> up on claws-mail when I got a hidpi display (claws-mail
> based on gtk2, which doesn't grok hidpi displays).
>
> Another point in favor of email clients over web pages is
> that there are many of them, and *you* control the display
> and other preferences rather than whoever wrote the forum
> or owns the server.
>
> > [Dan Sommers]
> >
> >> Whoever posted last ends up at the bottom of the thread, so that I can
> >> read threads from top to bottom in chronological order.  Getting the
> >> last word in shouldn't earn a spot at the top of the list.
> >
> >
> > That doesn't like any closer an approximation to a merit-based solution
> to
> > me.
> Perhaps not all by itself.  Many/most email clients allow
> individual users to "score" emails by various criteria, and
> then to display higher scoring messages "above" the others,
> or not display certain messages at all.  Personally, I don't
> use the automated systems, but they're very comprehensive
> (arguably too complicated), and again, *user* adjustable.
>
> In an optimal technical discussion, opinions from users
> don't count for anything.  The ideas stand on their own
> merits and research and metrics; users only serve to
> confirm the methodology.
>
> Dan
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