Re: Should we drop the digest?

[Fluhr <ejfluhr@austin.ibm.com>]

In an effort to fan the flames early on in this thread, and waste much
bandwidth railing against something that Herr Listmeister would not 
likely support in any case....

Phil Payne comments:
>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?
>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?

I strongly recommend AGAINST any ideas of doing away with the quattro
digest, as I believe it will result in significant attrition of our
list members.  I have to admit my bias here, as I would be forced
to unsubscribe from the list if the digest goes away.

In my initial years on the list, I attended college and had enough
free time (e.g. wanted a good reason to procrastinate schoolwork)
to deal with individual messages every day.  When I began work in
1996 at IBM, I could not afford the time and effort to deal with
100+ individual messages on a daily basis, and so resorted to the
digest.  I find the digest much more convenient for my particular work
environment (and yes, I am computer literate and can set up mail
filters).

As for response time, I know of a few q-list digest members, including
myself, who do read ahead after seeing a message that they want to
respond to.  Teaching others some of these techniques may help cut
down on wasted bandwidth.  Personally, I do not see digest members
as making any more contribution to wasted bandwidth than regular
members, except for the occasional mistake of including
an entire digest

To summarize, IT WOULD BE A SIGNIFICANT DETRIMENT TO THE Q-LIST FOR
US TO REMOVE THE DIGEST.   

Later,
Eric
'85 CGT, '82 urq
---
Eric J. Fluhr                                Email:  ejfluhr@austin.ibm.com
High End Processor Design                    Phone:  (512) 838-7589
IBM Server Group                             Austin, TX