Hi, Adam,
Gunnar's request is very much to the point of what Don wrote and what I wrote. This is not a matter of asking the designer to do busywork that a system can automate. The virtue of Listserv is that it is simple and it works across multiple platforms. The drawback of this incredibly robust, useful system is that people cannot automate all the tasks.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation on time spent scrolling past tails that could be removed suggests that a minute or two of work by the author of a post saves many person-hours when you multiply even a few seconds of work by more than 2,100 subscribers. What I am asking is that you invest a few minutes of time to make the list a better and more readable environment.
Since you are an employee of a for-profit college, I understand that your sig and disclaimer are dictated by corporate demands. I'm not worried about the sig. I'm asking that you consider the issues you control: the content of your posts.
As a member of the list, you design posts that the rest of us read, and you design a user experience for 2,100 subscribers and then some.
Yours,
Ken
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Adam Parker wrote:
--snip--
Hi Gunnar,
I agree. But the designer should also not be doing busywork for things that
are capable of being automated.
--snip--
[in reply to]
Gunnar Swanson, who wrote:
On Feb 11, 2012, at 1:00 AM, Ken Friedman wrote:
"And there is another issue. When you repost an entire prior reply, you force two thousand readers to re-read the entire prior reply. When you re-post a long string of prior posts, you force people to read back through the entire string. When you edit selectively, you highlight the specific issues to which you respond, improving the conversation and adding value to the list."
I made a off-hand comment in a class once, and one of my then students adopted it as an email sign for many years: "The designer should work harder so the user doesn't have to." Not a bad slogan.
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