--On Friday, July 05, 2002 9:34 AM -0400 Rich Kulawiec <rsk@magpage.com>
wrote:
> 1. Users *do* have a choice. There are plenty of decent MUAs available --
> many of them at zero cost -- which perform the same core set of MUA tasks
> as O/OE but with considerably lower risk to the user, the user's
> correspondents, the user's network, and the co-inhabitants of any mailing
> lists that the user happens to be on.
This is the kind of "assumption gap" that list admins need to watch out for
IMHO. Many listmembers have little or no choice in the MUA they use on a
daily basis, because they are non-privileged users on departmentally
managed PC's or mainframes, or otherwise subject to software policies over
which they exercise no control. Many more folks find themselves with even
less choice in the "MUA's of opportunity" they use in temporary
environments like airports, PDA's, in-laws' homes, overseas etc.
It's true that tech-savvy computer users with control over their software
environments have a choice of safe & standards-compliant MUA's they can
install (and probably use 90% of the time), and every list admin who takes
her or his leadership role seriously should be ready to recommend some of
them to interested members. But it's a grievous error to assume that only
the subset of people who are willing and able to do such installs "matter"
or are worthy of our attention. What I call elitism is the "get a real
mailer or get off my list" attitude. That sort of thing cannot be borne on
any list with an important real-world topic focus, although it may be
inflicted on some topic-free chatzones.
We cannot tell people "get a real employer" or "get a real airport" or "get
a real 2nd tier upstream ISP" and stuff. I mean, we can, and judging from
what you read here, sometimes we do, but it's wrong.
> 2. Using O/OE at this point is incredibly, unbelievably stupid. It's not
> like this is a newly-discovered problem; it's not like it's one that's
> easily fixed (by deselecting an option or avoiding a single problematic
> function) while retaining O/OE; and it's not like it's difficult to find
> alternatives. There are no valid excuses for anyone to continue to use
> a software product whose chief distinguishing feature is that it poses
> a hazard to everyone else on the Internet. O/OE is broken. It is badly
> broken. It is broken in way that makes it a nasty piece of malware.
> There is no evidence that it will be fixed; in fact, there is evidence
> that its vendor considers its worst flaws to be "features" and intends
> to "enhance" them.
There is no single problem, except the meta-problem that MS wanted a
certain set of "features" that exposed it to a Pandora's box of exploits,
and still wants those features, and is trapped with a buggy codebase and a
rotating cast of programmers to try and catch up with it. But there is no
one "bug," hence no one fix.
Nevertheless, when properly configured (which almost nobody does) OE, at
least, can be used safely. I end up stuck with it maybe twice a year and
escape to tell the tale.
> 3. If expecting users to take reasonable care to ensure that they
> and their systems do not pose an unacceptably high risk to the rest
> of the Internet is "petty geekmanship", then we've sunk incredibly low.
The entire problem is encapsulated thus: sitting on a list-managers list
and calling them 'users'. They are not 'users' to us, they are
listmembers. 'Users' is a PC support/computer admin term. They may be
some department's users, or nobody's users, but they are not our users -
they are our listmembers. It is not our job to configure their PC's or
Macs, it is not our job to debug their cable modems, it is our job to help
them share useful info on underlying topics that REALLY matter, with a
minimum of fuss and hair-tearing.
> 4. I think it gives list managing "a bad name" when we are willing
> to accomodate the stupidest, most intransigent users who absolutely
> refuse to get a clue even when it's provided to them repeatedly in
> simple language from a variety of sources over a long period of time.
> We do not serve the clueful users (who are hopefully in the majority,
> although I suppose that's debatable) well by lowering our standards in
> order to accomodate the point-and-drool crowd. A better course of
> action is to demand that the point-and-drool crowd use the
> readily-available resources (starting with "read what is on the screen in
> front of you") to educate themselves out of their ignorance, thus
> improving not only their own state, but that if everyone who interacts
> with them. Oh, it might seem harsh to take this attitude: but as I've
> learned from bitter experience, we are not doing end users any favors by
> attempting to accomodate their ignorance/laziness/stubborness.
What you call the "point and drool crowd" can easily include the CEO of a
major corporation, or an opera singer of world reknown, or your wife's
mother. Pulling the BOFH act with people who have real lives is what I
think gives us an *actual* bad name, as opposed to the inside-baseball "bad
name" of daring to be too accommodating.
Follow-Ups:
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