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Grex > Coop7 > #108: Possible Modifications to "mail" Default Behavior | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 95 responses total. |
adbarr
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response 50 of 95:
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Oct 15 23:59 UTC 1995 |
Yes, lilmo. One of my wiser decisions.
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steve
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response 51 of 95:
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Oct 17 06:08 UTC 1995 |
We (staff) have definately gotten a few pieces of mail that
people gave to "help", thinking that they'd get help at the
CC prompt. Some of them are a scream too, and make my day
just seeing them. Newcommers to mail are so wonderful and
excited about the prospects of sending lovenotes to their
beloved through the Ether.
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remmers
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response 52 of 95:
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Oct 17 08:24 UTC 1995 |
Yes, I think "a few" is a more accurate characterization than the
"hundreds" that you claimed back in #15.
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davel
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response 53 of 95:
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Oct 17 10:35 UTC 1995 |
I haven't seen hundreds, but it's been quite a few. Dozens, anyway, I
think.
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chelsea
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response 54 of 95:
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Oct 17 12:03 UTC 1995 |
Well, a few of those few were from me, I'm sure, but not because
I don't know that the Cc: prompt means but because I mistyped
the login ID I put on the Cc: line. So you'll still be getting
those mistakes from me even if you decide newusers don't need
this feature.
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remmers
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response 55 of 95:
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Oct 17 12:53 UTC 1995 |
Actually, I don't think we have. Simply typing a non-existent
user id on the Cc line won't send the mail to staff. The main
thing that does is typing "help" on the Cc line, since "help"
is an alias that includes staff.
As long as we're debating the volume of these misdirected
staff messages, I'd guess we get one once every couple of
weeks on average. Don't know for sure since I don't count
them, but in any case I don't find it annoying. As soon as
I realize that a message I'm reading belongs in this category,
I stop reading it and delete it.
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wisdom
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response 56 of 95:
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Oct 17 14:54 UTC 1995 |
Fine, like I said, if the status quo IS a problem, then fix it!
I just didn't see the problem, yet, but if you do, fine.
Just don't leave what's broken unfixed, either. That's the
other half of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
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scott
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response 57 of 95:
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Oct 17 16:13 UTC 1995 |
Except that we aren't sure if it's "broke" or not. A lot of people prefer
having it the way it is right now.
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steve
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response 58 of 95:
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Oct 17 16:17 UTC 1995 |
John, I stand begind the statement that we've received hundreds
of such letters since July 18th, 1991. I don't have all my Grex
email offline, but I do have it all archived. It litterally is
hundreds of peices. I know, beucase at one time I somewhat kept
track of them, and remember helping out with more than 20 of them in
92 alone.
We really have gotten in excess of 100 of them.
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popcorn
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response 59 of 95:
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Oct 18 04:09 UTC 1995 |
I'd guesstimate it's not more than two a month, total, on average.
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lilmo
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response 60 of 95:
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Oct 18 04:42 UTC 1995 |
How about this? Instead of changing the default for the mailer, which affects
everybody, old and new, set newuser to add noaskcc (or whatever the flag is)
to each new user's .mailrc (or whatever that file is), and provide a script
for other ppl to change it, like you did when we switched to gate as teh
default editor.
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selena
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response 61 of 95:
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Oct 18 05:05 UTC 1995 |
Yeah, that works. Us "already here" folks won't have to deal with
the change if we don't want to, and the newbies will have the
improvements you want.
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janc
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response 62 of 95:
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Oct 18 05:38 UTC 1995 |
Eats a lot of diskspace giving everyone .mailrc files, but I guess we have
a lot of disk space.
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remmers
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response 63 of 95:
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Oct 18 11:47 UTC 1995 |
A drawback to doing that is that people who are accustomed
to the Cc prompt on other systems will wonder why it's
missing on Grex; it won't be obvious to most of them how
to get it back. They'll come away with the impression that
Grex's mail program is brain-damaged.
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davel
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response 64 of 95:
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Oct 18 14:11 UTC 1995 |
mail *is* brain-damaged, right?
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popcorn
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response 65 of 95:
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Oct 18 14:35 UTC 1995 |
Yup. Which is why we're hoping to put the newbies into a better
mail program and not "mail", making this whole discussion moot.
Hopefully! :)
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remmers
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response 66 of 95:
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Oct 18 16:36 UTC 1995 |
That would be good. In the meantime I'd favor leaving the Cc
prompt in mail alone. It's useful, and although it can be
confusing to newcomers, I don't think it's been a big source
of problems, and turning it off as the default could simply
create new confusions and new problems.
In general, I think that taking a standard Unix program
(which "mail" is) and modifying it to remove, or appear to
remove, functionality is a bad idea, as it will be a source
of confusion and frustration to users who are familiar with
the program on other systems. Adding functionality is a
different story, and I certainly would favor changing "Cc"
to something more self-explanatory. To do that I think we
need the source code for mail. Is it available, and if so
is there someone who has the background, time, and interest
to get it and make the modifications?
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selena
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response 67 of 95:
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Oct 18 17:02 UTC 1995 |
I wouldn't be for switching newbies to a different default mailer at
all!
What if they are coming in during a busy time when pine, and even elm
are running *way* too slowly? You think PicoSpan being slow would
lose you members? How about if their *mailer* was unbearable?
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lilmo
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response 68 of 95:
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Oct 18 19:44 UTC 1995 |
That's a good point. There have been times when *mail* was frustratingly
slow. Unless we can find something at least similarly as fast as mail, I
don't think that anything else makes sense as the default.
Re #66: It prob would not involve any significant modifications, even to
someone with a marginal understanding of the language the source was written
in (prob C). It would just be a change of a string constant, right?
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ajax
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response 69 of 95:
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Oct 18 20:16 UTC 1995 |
Kind of humorous newbie/CC-related story from comp.risks:
> Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 09:36:02 +0000
> From: "self@usa1.com" <self@usa1.com>
> Subject: Polymorphism can apply to email....
>
> I am currently setting up my own Web site, through MASSInternet (a
> subsidiary of PSInet). I wanted to call this site espen.com, and to
> have my email address be self@espen.com, which I thought had a nice
> OO ring to it. Registering the domain name takes about 6 weeks, so
> in the meantime PSI gave me the email address self@usa1.com (rather
> grand, but it works fine).
>
> You can probably guess the rest: A number of email systems have a
> feature called copy_to_self, and apparently some users think the CC:
> field is where to turn this feature on. A transitory problem, to be
> sure, and so far the email copies I have received have not been really
> interesting....
>
> Espen Andersen <self@usa1.com, soon to be self@espen.com>
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sidhe
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response 70 of 95:
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Oct 19 00:14 UTC 1995 |
Indeed, worth noting, if for nothing else than a smile.
I'm curious if anyone on grex has the login of "self"..
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steve
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response 71 of 95:
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Oct 19 03:40 UTC 1995 |
Yes. On 7/30/94 there was a person from Singapore who used
"self" as an ID. The account was reaped sometime in 1995. No
other "Selfs" have ever existed on Grex.
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popcorn
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response 72 of 95:
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Oct 19 03:51 UTC 1995 |
I've just added a mail alias so that mail to "self" goes to /dev/null,
to prevent future problems.
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scg
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response 73 of 95:
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Oct 19 04:40 UTC 1995 |
Maybe we should make mail to "help" go to /dev/null also. ;)
There is a Grexer who is working on a shell script that puts a pretty user
friendly interface on the mail program, but shouldn't be much slower than
mail, so when he gets that finished it might be something to look into using
for new users. I haven't asked his permission to talk about it publicly yet,
so I won't say who's working on it here.
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davel
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response 74 of 95:
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Oct 19 10:21 UTC 1995 |
My first reaction was to be in favor of some variation on what Jan
originally suggested - probably adding .mailrc for new users. But as I
thought about it I've come to think more that it's not a good idea, for
pretty much the reasons John gave in #66. It's a pity, though.
I wonder if we could set up, say, procmail (which I've never actually
*used*) to generate a canned reply to messages with a cc: to help, rather
than being addressed to help as such.
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