SC - RECIPE CHALLENGE II

[david friedman]

Hi, Katerine here.  I asked the people sign their messages.  Greg Lindahl
replied:

>> Hi, Katerine here.  Just a quick request: many of the messages I've seen
>> in the last few days don't contain the sender's name anywhere.
>
>100% of them contain the sender's name in the headers... 

No, Greg, they don't.  100% contain the originating email address.  That
can be as uninformative as "user123 at labmac2.ourschool.edu".  For that matter,
mine isn't much better: why should people who know me as Katerine recognize
"gfrose@" etc. as me?  (That's only one of mine; and I may switch to my ISP
account mail instead -- in which case they'd be little better off, with "jtn@"
etc.)

About 90% contain the personal name connected with the account mailer, IF
there is one, which there only is if someone put one there.  Many new net
users aren't yet very sophisticated; and many using unix accounts don't know
how.  Many others don't know how to change it; if I didn't, the name you'd see
at the top of this header would be my husband's.  We don't have the same last
name.

On top of that, we don't use the same names in the SCA as elsewhere.  Why
expect everyone to memorize not only two sets of names for everyone on a list
of this size, but also the mapping between them?  Three sets, when you count in
email addresses?

>but some mail
>packages don't make it easy for you to view the headers. It's very
>difficult to get everyone to change years of ingrained habits because
>a few people's mailers are broken. 

A huge number of people in the SCA use unix accounts, which require paging
back if they're using most versions of unix mail.  This isn't a few broken
mailers.  And as I pointed out, even recovering the header only guarantees
accessto the account username.

Are there *really* that many people with that strong a habit of never signing
their mail?  Is it really that hard to make an attempt (which is all I asked)
to remember to do that?  I asked after a string of messages in which the
full header, once recovered, did *not* contain anything more informative than
usernames.

>This issue comes up on every SCA
>mailing list at some point, but is rarely resolved to everyone's
>satisfaction.

I would be satisfied if people tried, generally, to remember to say "Hi,
this is me" or to tack on a signature in their message.  (My emailer *does*
get .sigs, and anyhow, the issue there in this case is the listserv, which
seems to get them and pass them on just fine.  So a .sig would be fine, but
isn't necessary.)

For that matter, I can deal with email return addresses; but I'd be *happier*
if I knew who I was listening to.  Wouldn't other people?

On a totall different matter: Greg points out (rightly) that these don't
work.

>> New URL for culinary history page:
>>    http://linux.cottagesoft.com/home/jtn/public_html/Culinary/culinaryf.html

Oops: last element should be culhistf.html -- braindead fingers, or something
like that.  Sorry.

>>    or if that's a pain, you can get there from:
>>       http://www.cottagesoft.com/home/jtn

Oops.  HTML link failure across unix link.  And I thought I'd tested
everything... sigh.  Now fixed.  Thanks for the warning!@

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry

   URLS (really, this time):
     http://linux.cottagesoft.com/home/jtn/public_html/Culinary/culhistf.html
     http://www.cottagesoft.com/jtn

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