FW: [GLLUG] reply to

[Jeremy Bowers]

Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Don't you read the addresses on your outgoing mail before you
> send it?  That's the way to make sure it's going where you want
> it to go.  I make a habit of always checking outgoing addresses
> before I send.

See, now that's one of those "change your brain" arguments. I've already 
tried conforming to the software, for a period of several months now, 
and it's not working for me. As far as I'm concerned, it's broken. 
Telling the user what's wrong with them only infuriates them.

Like I said, I agree abstractly with the page, but it's a prototypical 
example of an academic argument that ends up not applying in the real 
world. The correct answer to UI problems can only be determined by 
empirical experimentation. If your program's model doesn't match the 
user's model, then your program's model must change. Changing user 
models is an exercise in futility, along with being a disservice to the 
user. And my user's model, along with apparently many others, is 
"replies go to the list".

It's not a big deal and I wouldn't hit this too hard, but it's sort of 
relevent to a lot of Linux programing. I won't bother spelling it out, 
because I'm sure you can all figure out where I'm going here... ;-)

The bottom line is that this policy is inhibiting participation in the 
list, because I'd just rather not bother dealing with the headers most 
of the time. You may consider it good that I feel that way ;-) ... but 
it's not good for the newbies either, and that's REALLY bad.

And I almost failed to send this to the list *again*.