On Tue, 3 Jun 1997, Bill Silvert wrote:
> Brock Rozen writes about a point that has bothered me for a long time:
> >By nature, list-owners shouldn't be clueless. Yes, I know it's a nice
> >thought -- but in order to deal with the list configuration file, they
> >have to know something about computers and majordomo.
> The problem is that list-owners are selected for their involvement with
> the subject, not necessarily for their mastery of computers. My greatest
> concern about MD is that list administration is really too complicated
> for most of the people who I think should be doing the job, so I end up
> managing almost all our lsits myself.
The thing is that the "dumb" users are "dumb" in different ways. SOme are
MacDumb, some are WinDumb, etc. What they really need is not more and more
purportedly-simple textstring combinations which magically cause effects
if emailed just right to just the right place; but rather, MacListManager
Pro or WinListManager Pro or the like end-user client program specific to
the look and feel that is all they are willing to admit the possibility of
even attempting to understand. Such a tool would probably know how to
handle all the commonly used types of mailing list, from manually
maintained ones through SmartList and Majordomo and ListProc and so on to
various obscure ones that only the developers of such clients may even
know about anymore.
Basically the cure for dumb users is not dumb services or even smart
services but rather smnart user-agents that look dumb enough to dumb users
to encourage the dumb users to attempt to understand them.
Blessed Be. -MarkM-
--
We do remote Linux install, config, support and administration. Inquire.
........................................................................
"The saddest thing is they WANT to be ignorant, INSIST on it in fact."
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