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Hi, Adam,

People take the list in different modes, and a great many subscribe in daily digest format. Well formatted, neatly structured replies make a better conversation and they make life easier for those of us who don't use Gmail.

A member of my family uses Gmail at a university that went to Gmail for internal mailing. She finds it clunky and difficult, and it offers many problems. I can help her sort through some of them, but not all. I use Groupwise, but my university is moving over to Outlook. Groupwise is a bit clunky, but I'm not about to set up separate email accounts just so I can read one list.

It was always my sense that scholarly and scientific conversation works best when people reflect on what they write and spend the time required for careful writing. With any number of different email formats, I'd argue that it is easier for one person to write well with careful editing than to ask two thousand people to adjust their formats.

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'm not asking you to "adjust your workflow." I'm asking you to add value to a scholarly, scientific, and professional list by investing time in carefully conceived, well structured posts. Conception and structure involves our selection of the material to which we respond as well as the words we write. 

Yours,

Ken

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Adam Parker wrote:

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It also seems unnecessary to continuoually ask list members to adjust their workflow, when a modern email client can autohide tails.

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