At 07:38 AM 10/2/00, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote:
>You're trying to train users to match the software, rather than modify the
>software to match the users' assumptions.
Personal experience suggests that there are more ways to do it wrong
than there are people in the world. Trying to accommodate mistakes
tends to encourage mistakes, and my life as a list owner and system
administrator got TOUGHER (not easier) when I did things for the
users instead of educating them.
I believe most people are trainable. I don't think we need to "dumb down"
so much as we need to explain clearly... that's why I suggested some
changes to the error report would be best.
An example where modifying the software for one user caused problems for
another user: We talked Jason into allowing a regular expression for
sig block separators, with a default lenient enough to catch all the
yahoo/hotmail/etc freebie providers. SOOO lenient, in fact, that it
now catches the "on xxx you wrote" quoting header from at least one
mail tool: This means that the rest of the msg, including the "accept"
command, is discarded as a signature block. Did we do the right thing?
Yes, for at least some people. Did we do the wrong thing? Yes again.
As I posted earlier, "reading through" quotations means that you will
find false commands that are in the confirmation message, and confuse
the situation even more. Training *IS* the solution to this problem,
I think, because the OTHER solution screws up even MORE people.
At 07:36 AM 10/2/00, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote:
>But -- and I say this with great repspect -- you're a GEEK.
True by some definitions, but the REAL geeks complain that I won't
learn emacs and use WinNT instead of FreeBSD for my daily operations.
>Most list managers are not and need not be.
That's where system administrators shine, NOT where the software takes over!
>I give my llist-owners exactly two choices at setup time: a predefined
>discussion list setup and a predefined announcement list setup. I then
>have about 4 specific variations.
Looks like you agree with me: Newbie owners should be given choices by
their admins, advanced owners need a powerful GUI, so who needs a simple
one? Which problem would you like the GUI to solve? Absolute newbies (for
which you have properly provided defaults), or for the person setting
up the defaults (for which access to ALL the options is important)?
>The fact is, whether it will allow *you* (or even me) to do it is not that
>important.
You assume there are lots of newbies, that they can't or won't learn,
and that they have no access to experts who can steer them. Lots of
assumptions, neither of us has proof.
>It's whether it will allow the averabe newbie list-owner to do
>it with 15 minutes' reading that counts.
That problem is best solved with examples and not a GUI. I'll be happy
to install sample complete list configs in the help system if there is
general concensus on what should be there (and which help file it should
go into). If we do what you've already done (provide stock templates)
with notes about the things they shouldn't touch unless they educate
themselves, haven't we made their life even EASIER?
SRE
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