Re: Forwarded from David McDonald

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Fred is the least technically savvy person I have ever met. He probably has
> no idea of what to do about the problem. I do not even know what you are
> talking about.

The staircase effect looks
something
like this. It is a function of
including
hard end-line-characters in
email
that extend beyond the line limit
of the
message you are forwarding to the list.

----

Unless it is something of burning interest to the list, a "staircase" email
will not be read. Since the staircase effect is usually associated with
lengthy forwarded articles, it is an egregious waste of bandwidth.

> You guys are just way too fast to fly off the handle and draw all sorts of
> conclusions, IMHO.

You shouldn't assume this, Dave. I have called Fred's attention to these
sorts of problems from nearly the day he began posting. At one point he was
posting the same item 2 and 3 times in a row routinely. I think the basic
problem is that since Fred is a "restrict post" person, he does not get
emails from the list which can serve as a kind of feedback mechanism. He
also is in the habit of crossposting to 5 and 6 email lists at a time,
which makes it very easy to lose track of things.

> I am personally extremely careful about what I contribute to the list and
> that may be good. In general, most of my responses I put into "drafts" in
> Outlook and they stay there. I was about to begin a thread on ABBA just
> before Fred raised, but figured the list must be somehow beyond that sort of
> thing.

I loved them, especially their rendition of "Dancing Queen".

> Pretty much the way the SWP used to make me feel about raising
> political issues.

Really? I don't think it is such a big deal to get rid of "staircasing".
James Daly, who is a philosophy professor and there aren't many people more
in the clouds than them, got rid of it easily enough. But if I were to
raise my differences in the SWP in 1977 over the character of the period at
a preconvention discussion, I would have been the target of an endless
round of petty-bourgeois baiting and socially ostracized. Not quite the
same thing at all.

David, you really have to appreciate the amount of work that it takes to
maintain Marxmail. It takes me an inordinate amount of time to look after
bounced messages because somebody allows their mailbox to fill up when they
go on vacation (don't do this!), while Les is burdened with moving stuff to
Hans's computer, managing worms and bounces from unsubbed addresses.

All we ask is that comrades maintain a modicum of respect for formatting.
Perhaps we are anal retentive, but there are worse sins.


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org