At 2:05 PM -0400 10/26/00, Jelmer Jellema is rumored to have typed:
But seriously: my mother would not understand anything you say.
(*sigh*) That is not correct; I am an excellent instructor. Ask around; there are a bunch of people here who have learned with my guidence. (Note I do not "teach," I try to "lead" people to understanding for themselves. Trust me, if your mother is motivated to learn, I can help her do just that.)
You tell her the RTFM, you loose a client. If you do not want her to be your client, that's fine.
It is not out of line for _anyone,_ including your mother (or mine, for that matter), to understand how to use the software she owns and operates. To suggest otherwise is simply making excuses for laziness. I have _never_ met anyone who was incapable of understanding, once motivated enough to attempt to learn, and guided gently in the proper direction. I have, on the other hand, dealt with a lot of people who are too d*mned _lazy_ to learn, and just want me to make their life easier by screwing up my mailing lists.
I want my clients to be comfortable using my lists. I don't think they want to here me say "buy a mac" or "use procmail" when they got a problem.
I'm sorry, but I never suggested either of those things to any of the subscribers to my mailing lists (although I have occasionally _wanted_ to tell certain people that a Macintosh would be a better, simpler choice for them than a Windoze box, I have refrained). I _have_ said, "No, I will not alter the subject line of the messages on my mailing list, since I haven't the right to munge something the poster has typed, and there are other and better ways for filtering to be accomplished." I have also said, "No, I will _not_ change the Reply-To header of the messages; if you want to send a messgae to the list, you may use Reply-To-All, or copy/paste the list address into the To: field of the message, or drag-and-drop, or any of a bunch of other methods...but not every email _should_ go to the list, and I want you to think about whether your message should _before_ you send it and apologize later for sending private email to thousands of people." (Actually, I have said those things in a much gentler fashion, but we're all adults here, so I can afford to be more blunt.) Munging the subject is just the simplest way for the clueless to accomplish the filtering, munging the Reply-To is just the simplest way for the clueless to post messages to the list, and I have no intention to do any pandering to said clueless. I will bust my rear end helping someone understand how to do these things the _correct_ way, however. I spend a _lot_ of time educating my subscribers (I have a boatload of form letters I've developed over the many years I've been operating mailing list servers from the good-old-days when mReply was sufficient, since we all trusted each other and never needed to worry about mailbombs and confirmations, and am always available for one-to-one sessions with any subscriber that really doesn't understand the information in the form letters), but I simply will not coddle those who do not _wish_ to learn their software, and instead expect _me_ to make things easy for them to the detriment of the cluefull. (Munging the Reply-To, for example, makes it _more difficult_ to send a private message, and no less difficult for the clueful to send a public message. It is the perfect example of an unnecessary and wasteful munge performed only for those too lazy to learn their own mail client software.) Seems pretty simple, really. If you (again the emperical, not the reader personally) want to be on the Internet, you should have a passing understanding of the software you use, and not gripe to me because I am not screwing things around unnecessarily on my mailing list. Just as, if you want to write a letter and use a spell checker, you should learn how to use your word processing software, and not ask your recipient to correct your spelling mistakes before reading your letter.
I do not understand what you mean with this thing about the committee, the democray and the dictatorship.
I'm not surprised. Charlie