On 8/21/23 19:11, Keith Moore wrote:
On 8/21/23 18:44, Christian Huitema wrote:
Simple proposal: we should move our culture to top-posting. No tool needed. Don't worry too much bout text/plain versus text/html.
Emphatically opposed. I've seen what happens when this is used, and it's a disaster.
But I should probably point out (because in a way it's related) that a big part of the problem with email discussions today is that so many people read and answer email on handheld mobile devices. And they have short attention spans because who wants to scroll through dozens of tiny screens to dig into the depth of some subtle technical point?
That's a similar problem that you get from top posting. Being able to respond point-by-point to a long detailed message is hugely beneficial and top posting kills it.
A bit more on this though: if it turns out that everyone's going to insist on reading and answering IETF mail using handheld mobile devices, the whole top-posting vs point-by-point debate may be moot. If anything, it's probably harder to read a point-by-point reply on a mobile phone than it is to read a top-posted reply.
I'd recommend that everyone read and answer IETF mail on desktop
computers or maybe tablets, something that can display about as
much as a paper page of information at a time. But what I
recommend means nothing if most IETF participants aren't willing
to do that. (yes, we used to read mail on 25x80 character
screens and do okay, but modern mobile devices are far worse than
that)
But this just reinforces my conviction that what we need to do is
not have a committee dictate what format everyone should
exchange mail in. What is needed is more like research to figure
out how we can have more effective discussions than we are having
now. And that probably means that we need to allow for the
possibility of experimenting with multiple approaches, whether
those experiments are conducted in serial or in parallel, and
perhaps refined one or more times.
So I specifically do not want a working group, now or
anytime soon. I do not want a designated design team as a
near-term effort. I might like to see multiple independent
research efforts (assuming multiple parties are interested) to try
different things and make recommendations, and/or produce
different implementations that people can eventually evaluate for
themselves in WGs or WG-like efforts.
And part of what needs to be evaluated, eventually, is whether
IETF participants (and perhaps other user groups) are willing to
use some particular system given the kinds of practice that might
be needed to use it effectively (e.g. not using mobile devices, or
only using mobile devices to flag messages (using IMAP) that need
more attention later from a desktop).
Keith
