On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 10:29, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> > They are realistic about people's use of email. They hit
> > reply/reply-all to reply to the sender/group, not necessarily
> > to the content of the previous message, and they change
> > the subject line when it isn't relevant and they are changing
>
> Ah, so we ignore established standards based on users' stupidity. Good
> idea.
Usability is always a good thing. If users do something different,
your standard or implementation wasn't usable.
> > the topic. Please resume this argument when you have taught
> > the rest of the world the value of the headers they can't
>
> Threading that *works* is the value that users would notice.
I've never seen any value in following a sequence of messages
when the topic changes frequently - as it does in many conversations.
> > see and some way to get the address list from a message
> > without making an irrelevant In-Repy-To:.
>
> Yeah, because address books are *so* hard to use.
I don't see the relevance. Why would I want to clutter my address
book with names I won't use again, and what address book would group
them as found on the message? The idea is to send to the same set
of people, but not necessarily about the same topic.
> I'm sorry, but making decisions based on Stupid User Tricks is about the
> worst policy I can imagine. That way lies madness.
On the contrary. Programs should do what people want, not the other way
around. In the commercial world, the other way lies bankruptcy. One of
the sad side effects of free software is how slowly the bad stuff dies.
If there is value in following a set of replies that stay on topic, then
the programs need to make that visible and offer a choice to continue
the conversion with the same people on a different topic.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
