WikiDiscuss

WikiDiscuss


email conventions

posts: 2388
Use this thread to discuss the email conventions page.
posts: 2388



Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>
wrote:
<<On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 03:03:03PM -0700, John
E Clifford wrote:
> A>The program appears to be Yahoo Mail and that
does not appear to be
> an adaptation of any other mail program. It
also does not appear to
> have within itself any way to change the
quoting convention.

If you wouldn't mind trying the instructions at:

http://mailformat.dan.info/config/yahoo.html

including the switching to the plain editor and
then mailing me that
way, I'd appreciate it. If you really hate it so
much you can't do it,
fine, but I'd like to at least prove that it can
be done.>>

Thanks. The regular Yahoo guides do fail to
mention a lot of this stuff. As long as it is
here, I have no real objection to using it — in
spite of its being (and having been since the
early eighties) a particularly bad quoting
convention (mainly because after step three it
become impossible to keep track of who is who,
but also because of the waste of space and three
other reasons that I forget. Have you really
never heard of The RAND Corp?) I see that I now
have NO quote markers. Hmmm!



posts: 2388

Hot damn! Now the quote convention is adhered
to!


<rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:

The early stuff is vcovered by the reply to the
later post.

> > D> It is not clear to me why complaints and
> accurate comments about
> > your systems are interdicted while your
> comments about others are not.
>
> Because I do this for a living, so I speak from
> an authority you do not,
> for one thing. For another, because as I said
> I work my ass off on
> lojban.org infrastructure, and I demand respect
> as a response.

It is probably because you do it for a living
that many of your comments are inappropriate: you
know how to work the angles but do not have to
live with these critters on a day to day basis,
getting by on only what dribbles of instructions
some one who does it for a living sees fit to
pass on (the Yahoo Help files is a classic
example in a small way) You also obviously know
where to go when you need more information; this
is not something generally known (and again I
thank you for leading me to what was needed in
this case. And I have to say that the Tiki
instructions have gotten better: I can't remember
the last time I had a problem that did not have
an answer somewhere — not always where I would
have expected it, to be sure — in the
instruction pages. Thanks again.)

> It occurs to me that by "defective systems",
> you may have meant my style
> of quoting, rather than my computer systems, in
> which case I am slightly
> less annoyed.

I did indeed mean the stye of quoting, going from
the RAND study of probably 20 years ago now --
which had no impact at all that I can see.

> > You insult a reasonably good program and
> insist on the superiority of
> > an inferior one
>
> What the *HELL* are you talking about? I don't
> know what program you
> are using, so I cannot have insulted it, and I
> have yet to reccomend any
> other programs, because you haven't given me
> enough information to do
> so.
> > (somewhere there is a RAND study on how
> quotes ought to be done)
>
> I have no idea what RAND is. Citation or URL?

The study came out shortly after my friend got to
be assistant director of the Ergonomics Section
at RAND, so I'd say about 1985, give or take a
year. She didn't do it but she did approve it
and sent me a prepub, which I have since lost. I
don't remember either title or RD number and only
fragments of the content.

> > I am not overjoyed with the system I have but
> it is what I have and I
> > am stuck with it for now.
>
> No, you are not, and if you'd listen to what I
> say and answer me I would
> have already suggested several alternatives.

All of which, alas, depended — until the one you
sent later — on knowing what I was dealing with
and finding on it certain menus (which either
don't exist on Yahoo or go by different names and
are filed in places I would never think to look
-- I still have not found Tools.)
I have been giving you the best answers I had
available, sorry that they were not — until
finally — of much use.
>
> > E> Same back atcha, fella. I have never
> knbowingly insulted your
> > work;
>
> "defective systems" isn't an insult?
>
> > F> You set up the quotation convention?
> Shame on you.
>
> When I read "defective systems", I assumed that
> you mean my *computer*
> systems, i.e. lojban.org.

Hell, no. Of the sites I have to deal with from
time to time, Lojban is about as good as any --
including (or even especially) those for computer
haard- or soft-ware companies (which are slicker,
usually, but much less helpful). Although I
admit I have a residuual memory of you or someone
recommending Linux over Windows, to which my only
comments is that while Windows occasionally
doesn't work and its security leaks like a sieve,
it never destroyed 7 gigs of harddrive the way
that Suse Linux did.