Eric Thomas wrote:
[...]
> This is true if you can make the assumption that all the list owners want to
> use active probing with a period of one month and with the exact same probe
> text. In a typical university, or large company, or service bureau, there
> are dozens or even hundreds of list owners, who each like to run their list
> a different way. The probe text that the Sales department wants to use is
> totally unacceptable to the Investor Relations department. The only solution
> is then for each group of like-minded list owners to run their separate copy
> of the software, which means higher manpower costs. When someone leaves the
> company one day and the new guy does not agree with the rest of the group he
> is working with, a new instance needs to be installed just for him.
Given an end-user point-of-view, I see that issue different. If
subscribers here are really unlucky, they might get the unmodified
listserv-template for one mailinglist, a german translation for another
list (possibly containing errors due to the listowner not understanding
the original one), a third one where the listowner elaborates how great
the list is, but doesn't bother to mention how to unsubscribe and where
to find a list-archive, and finally the text "Remember to send questions
regarding E-Mail to email@listserv!" [1] which isn't even recognised as
an active probe at all and leads to confused inquiries of end-users, why
they are no longer supposed to contact the usual postmaster-address.
The end-user would IMHO expect: a that is easily recognised as such,
correct information, the same set of information (where to find the
archive, how to unsubscribe....), etc. User-interfaces (and probes are
part of that) should be consistent to ease their handling by the end-users.
That's no problem if a person just subscribes to one list at a given
server, but here people ususally subscribe to several lists and then
consistency is an issue.
BTW, you mention companys as examples where different list-owners run
lists in different ways. I dare to doubt that, because there will
usually be corporate-identity issues and other policies requiring
consistency. So I see few examples, where "easy templating and
customization" are actually a major issue.
But I don't think we should discuss this much longer, there are certanly
good examples and justifications for both points of view. Shades of grey....
> Personally, I think active probing is obsolete anyway. There are cases where
> it makes sense, but they are very few. I don't use it on any of my lists.
I certainly agree with you, but at my university there are still 500 of
800 lists configured to use active probing, with periods ranging from
monthly to yearly. I'm not sure wheter my predesessor trusted
passive-probing...
[...]
> This again works fine on the assumption that list owners do not customize
> the web interface. Otherwise, you will only have chaos. The user, having
> selected for instance German as his preferred language, will see a random
> mix of French and German when accessing the French list. The pages or
> fragments of pages customized by the French list owners will (I would
> assume) be in French, and the default system pages would be in German. Of
> course, this problem could be solved if the French list owner would provide
> a German version of his customizations (and one for every other supported
> language). But what is the motivation for the French list owner to do this,
> even assuming that he also speaks German?
I believe this is exactly what I pointed out in my e-mail when I said
"Of course I admit that internationalization in a way conflicts with
listservs templating-system, which encourages the listowners to provide
an individual experience for each mailinglist." So I certainly agree
with you about that.
[1] yes, the probe "Remember to send questions regarding TOPIC to
LIST@listserv!" has been used by a listowner for several lists and
should have read "This is an active probe for mailinglist LIST. It is
meant to discuss TOPIC. Don't be surprised if you never heard about it,
I probably just thought you might be interested and didn't bother to
tell you about it. But since it is me who is doing it, you can't
consider it to be spam. "
--
CU,
Patrick.
|
