[Elizabeth Lear Newman: [tedw@microsoft.com: Idea: Ramp-Up Procedure]]

[Brent Chapman <brent @ mycroft . GreatCircle . COM>]

Forwarded without comment; I haven't even taken time to read it yet,
but at a glance it looks like a feature request for Majordomo, so here
you go...


-Brent
--
Brent Chapman         | Great Circle Associates  | Call or email for info about
Brent@GreatCircle.COM | 1057 West Dana Street    | upcoming Internet Security 
+1 415 962 0841       | Mountain View, CA  94041 | Firewalls Tutorial dates

------- Forwarded Message

Message-Id: <9404061703.AA23684@itgmsm>
From: tedw@microsoft.com
To: Majordomo-Owner@world.std.com
Subject: Idea: Ramp-Up Procedure
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 94 10:01:00 PDT
X-Mailer: Microsoft Mail V3.0


Hi there!

Here's an idea for improving the mailing list services provided by 
Majordomo.

Problem:
~~~~~~
Discussion groups often have continuous conversations where each posting 
assumes that the audience has read each preceding message.  When newcomers 
try to contribute, their well-meaning comments often appear out of context 
to the others and end up being disruptive to the conversation.

Suggested Solution:  Backread Command
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This could be a spin-off of Majordomo's existing index feature.  Majordomo 
would keep a buffer of the last XXX postings to each mailing list.  A new 
user could then send majordomo a command:

     backread <list> <#ofmsgs>

and receive the last <#ofmsgs> messages sent to that mailing list.  Some 
mailing lists may not care if new subscribers backread, others may want to 
require it.  The backread command could be expanded to include a <subject> 
parameter, allowing a new subscriber to backread one particular thread of 
the mailing list.  For example:

     backread boston-book 10 "moby dick"

would return the last 10 messages in the boston-book list with the string 
"moby dick" in their subject lines.

Please let me know what you think.  My email address is tedw@microsoft.com.

TedW

------- End of Forwarded Message