[TriLUG] Rant: Please trim responses

[Tanner Lovelace]

On Thu, 2002-03-21 at 11:49, Rob Napier wrote:
> Which brings me to my next abbreviated rant (I've been thinking of writing this
> up at length, but haven't really wanted to dive into it): computers and the
> internet do not exist only for geeks. The rest of the world considers them tools
> to get a job done. To this end, most of the geek complaints about email
> ettiquite revolve around the fact that we're worried about how the system works,
> while most users are worried about how to *use* it to get their work done.

I disagree.  I believe most of the rants (at least mine) are
about things that make it take longer for me to get things done.
Whether that corresponds to how the system works or not is
irrelevant.

> Consider HTML mail. We scream about it. Why? 

Hmm... maybe because when you send an html e-mail the e-mails
are anywhere from 30% to 60% larger than they would be if you
sent the equivalent e-mail using plain text.  You may have unlimited
disk space and bandwidth, but don't automatically assume everyone else
does too.

> HTML is a free, open standard. It
> has readerers on every platform you could want. And it adds useful
> functionality. Is it a good formatting language? No. But the usual complaints
> aren't that we should be using SGML or TeX or the like. The complaints are "I
> can't read it conveniently with my mailer." 

No, my main complaint is the size.  Oh, that and many spam companies
send me html e-mail with image links that point back to their website.
One of the main reasons I switched to evolution was that there was no
way to get netscape/mozilla not to load these images.  Why is this a
problem?  Consider, if you will, a spamming company.  They have this
list of e-mail addresses.  They don't know for sure if they all work
or not.  But, they send an HTML e-mail with an img tag that points
back to their server, perhaps with a special tag for each user they
sent it to.  I receive it and load it up in my HTML enabled mail
program.  It gladly goes and downloads the image from the spammer's
server.  Bingo!  The spammer now knows that my e-mail address is
valid and I get a lot more spam.  Don't believe me?  This is exactly
what happened to my wife recently.

> Then get a mailer that can. This
> idea that everything has to be readable on a vt100 is insane (even though HTML
> will render just fine on a vt100), and completely misses the point of using
> computers to get work done. It's *good* that they can do new things, and
> formatting is valuable. You may have found ways around it (note the *'s I use
> above because I can't use bold), but why should the entire world "work around"
> the problems of people who will never upgrade. This is common of many geek
> complaints. We've worked around not having something, or we don't need it for
> our jobs, so it isn't important. I say this as a recent HTML-ranter who has
> recently realized what I hypocrite I was being. Can HTML be overused? Sure. So
> can 10-line ASCII signatures. But that doesn't mean that formatted text isn't a
> good thing (and something we had for years before email; and now we're supposed
> to give it up?)
> 
Whether formated text is a good or bad thing is beside the point in my
arguments above.

> Basically this boils down to we geeks saying "no, you can't have formatting in
> email because <blah blah, implementation detail about searching or rendering or
> bandwidth or whatnot, using ancient tools>." The user response is correct: "you
> guys are the geeks; aren't you supposed to make this stuff work? It works fine
> for us non-technical types." And given the fact that we're talking a
> platform-independent, open standard with tons of existing, free,
> implementations, are they wrong?
> 
> I'm not going to go into the detail here (may later), but another one to soul
> search about is attachments. User mails attachment to 100 other users. This is
> bad for the system, but it's what the user meant to do (and has lots of
> advantages over "posting to a web page and sending a link"). Are the problems
> with the system evidence of a dumb user (doing the obvious), or is it evidence
> that we haven't developed an infrastructure that handles what users want to do.
> Think for a few minutes about how you would design an email system that *could*
> handle this kind of use. Shouldn't take long (I'll send you the answer if you
> like, but we're all smart geeks here. Hint: garbage collection). Who's fault is
> it that we don't have that system?
> 
Garbage collection?  Okay, you through me there.  Please explain.  I
don't believe, however, that you can actually explain it to my
satisfaction.  (How's that for a challenge? :-)


> It's time to stop blaming users for wanting to get their jobs done without
> having to always worry about how the tool is implemented. It's time we started
> implementing better (and more functional) tools.
> 

I believe my arguments above stand on their own merits and
are completely independent of your complaints.  

Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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