MCGUIRE@GRIN2.BITNET (06/05/87)
> Date: 4 JUN 87 10:31-EDT > From: AWPSYS%RITVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU > Subject: Keep the Digest!!!! > > Please KEEP the digest form. With a small amount of work with > VMS mail and TPU as your default editor, you can make reading digests > easier than reading separate messages. Let us _end_ this discussion about digests! When did the list moderator ask for a vote? It was made clear to us some time ago that info-vax would not be distributed in digest format. Now that I've vented my righteous wrath, the hypocrite in me shall now * Flame ON * about the concept of digests in general. Then, since I don't know where this discussion should rightly take place, somebody please inform me, and I'll repost it there. Anyone who wants to come and argue over there will hopefully leave info-vax to vax info. This is not directed at you personally, Andrew. Your comment is quite correct. It is easy to undigestify mail if you're using VMSmail and TPU. I must point out to the list readership that we are a very diverse group. We have different incarnations of VAXen. We run VMS, Ultrix-32, BSD, SysV, and other operating systems. Many of us use other systems to read our netmail. All this suggests that we use lots of different editors and mailers. You knew that already. For example, our campus standard for mail is ALL-IN-1 or Dreams/6, and our standard for editors is WPS-PLUS, EDT, or MASS-11. What's important is that few of us can change our mail delivery system or editor at a whim. Therefore, point one is that posting an undigestifyer for GnuMail/HippoEMACS or whatever it is that you use does not justify your vote for a digest. My second point is that the entire BITNET readership generally receives digests out of order. This leads directly to indigestion. It's much more confusing than receiving occasional individual messages out of order--which happens less frequently. My third point is that it is valuable to get messages distributed to readers in a timely fashion. I've observed that I get answers to an urgent request for information within a couple of hours. I get answers published in digests after a couple of days. This would require me to ask people to reply to me instead of to the list. If the replies were copied to the list, there would be increased network traffic. If not, the readership would miss the possibly valuable answers. Timeliness of BITNET distribution in particular varies inversely to the length of the memo being transmitted. My fourth point is that the mail loops which cause us to get multiple copies should be fixed at the sources. The X.400 standards people are having in-depth discussions about how to avoid mail loops. Digest format does not eliminate the problem, certainly at least for the list moderator. * Flame OFF * Asbestos suit donned. Fire away. _Somewhere other than info-vax_. Ed <MCGUIRE@GRIN2.BITNET>