paul wrote:
> if you expect his viewpoint to change i don't think you understand it.
> it's often the case that people have a presentation style that puts some
> folks off. discarding informed insights because you find the package
> unappealing doesn't serve your self-interest.
Well, wrt to mailing list packages, Dan hasn't pointed out anything
here we don't already know. So no new insights were presented on this
list by him. And he has belittled several features that after years
of use with thousand-member mailing lists, others have found have made
their lists more noise-free, their subscribers happier, and has
reduced the time needed to spend managing the list. It's the
difference between what works in theory and what works in practice.
> of course this assumes that
> you care about making things better as well as your time.
As it happens, I *don't* use majordomo because I personally find it
deficient in several ways. I use a self-hacked version of Smartlist
and made it do what needed done. Many of them solutions I would have
sneered at in my starry-eyed beginning list-admin days. It was
experience that taught me otherwise. And my ego likes to think I'm a
pretty good list admin and that's why my extremely narrow topic list
(very low fat vegetarian food and cooking) has thousands of
subscribers, why they send me donations to support the list, and why
when Newsweek asked its readers to tell them about their favorite
lists, mine was one of the two they highlighted. (and maybe why my
no-graphics, bare-bones text and search engine website based on the
list is starting to get requests to advertise on it -- yes for pay).
Yes, some of my list features make it harder for members to do certain
things. And you know what? It's totally absolutely 100% intentional.
I *want* certain things to be hard for my subscribers. Spam isn't the
only problem and experienced list admins know that. Those of us who
run large lists tend to be intimately familiar with the list packages
we use and know most of its weaknesses and strengths *and* whether IN
PRACTICE those weaknesses are a problem. If Dan wants us to listen he
first has to realize that we are probably already aware of the problem
(they are not new insights to us) and that we are dripping with hard
won experience: many of us started out by running our lists manually,
have used more than one MLM, and have experienced a staggering variety
of list abuses. For example, my mailing list address was spam-baited
on usenet (as well as several of my addresses, probably because the
previous week someone forged one of my addresses into the From: line
of a UBE and they assumed I was the spammer) and none of the resulting
spam flood made it onto the list.
BTW, one of the majordomo "features" I *don't* have is an -outgoing
address. And one feature I do have that majordomo doesn't (correct me
if I am wrong) is the ability to send multiple seperate info files to
new members (in seperate emails). Both of these are part of the
reason I use Smartlist instead of majordomo. Does my personal version
of Smartlist have problems/deficiences. You betcha! Am I gonna fix
them all? No, I will fix them as they become problems or threat to
become problems in practice. And I'm working on one right now.
> >>>>> "artemis" == Michelle Dick <artemis@rahul.net> writes:
>
> artemis> Actually, I think that the more lists Dan runs, the better.
> artemis> After he's had 5+ years of running several lists with
> artemis> memberships in the thousands and tens of thousands, his
> artemis> viewpoint may change. Of course, this assumes he cares about
> artemis> S/N ratio of the lists as well as his time.
--
Michelle Dick artemis@rahul.net East Palo Alto, CA
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