ubuntu-users Digest, die! die! die!

[Pongo A. Pan]

On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 14:21 +0200, Amedee Van Gasse wrote:
> On Mon, June 20, 2011 04:14, Pongo A. Pan wrote:

> > Just sayin.  Digests on lists are evil.
> 
> Add a rule to your mail client that automatically deletes all digest
> mails, based on subject. That shouldn't be hard. Ask if you need
> assistance.
> 
Trying not to be offended... I'm not a noob, and I know perfectly well
how to do that.

I'm questioning the very existence of digests on mailing lists: they
can't reduce the total number of bytes a subscriber receives by very
much (just the headers) and any modern mail client can easily sort list
mail into a folder so the difference between getting 100 mails or one or
two daily from a list can't matter very much either.

Digests clog up the list (and more important, the archives) when some
untutored person replies to one without trimming or altering the subject
line as happens on this list about once a week.  They break threading.
They're just an annoyance and an impediment to the discussion.  Given
that some users on dial-up or with metered service may want to save the
overhead of downloading all the headers, it seems reasonable that digest
subscriptions be made read-only or that anything with "ubuntu-users
Digest" in the subject be automatically sent to moderation. 

-- 
pongo pan
Epictetus up 1 day, 3:43, 2 users, load average: 0.03, 0.04, 0.08
Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae
Ubuntu 11.04, KDE: 4.6.2