Should we drop the digest?

[quk@isham-research.demon.co.uk (Phil Payne)]

I know that many people prefer a few digests to dozens or hundreds of
messages, and I can easily conceive of situations where it's more
appropriate.

But - is the digest itself actually part of the problem?

Many questions seem to receive two groups of answers - one or two
immediate replys, and then perhaps two to four a day later, when many of
us have already forgotten the issue.

Is it possible that the phenomenon of digest readers seeing and
answering questions up to a day after the whole issue is done and dusted
is one of the most significant contributions to wasted bandwidth?

Digest readers should _ALWAYS_ read to the end of the digest before
answering a question within it.  How many times do they see an item,
respond to it, and then find a perfectly adequate response contained in
the same digest just a few messages further on?

Quite apart from those who copy the whole 90KB digest into their
responses ...

--
 Phil Payne
 Phone: 0385 302803   Fax: 01536 723021
 (The contents of this post will _NOT_ appear in the UK Newsletter.)