×
The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.
On 14 Jun 2013 05:34, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
<<SNIP>> It also looks like crap at archives.midrange.com. However
several people just do not care. <<SNIP>>
They don't understand that email readers line up threads by hidden
document fields and not just the subject line combined with
date/time.
<rant>
The /pot and kettle/ idiom come to mind.
That commentary in the above quoted text is provided by someone who
both top posts and leaves the EOM marker at the bottom of their
messages, thus losing all context for their reply in the archives. As
such, a reviewer of the archives can only *assume* to what had been
replied, will be the immediately previous message in the archives.
Often little sense can be made of their reply, for lack of knowing
specifically to what text their reply was directed; esp. if the
replied-to message was very long, the commentary was complex or
multifaceted, or multiple questions had been asked.
While the following is hardly an example of one of the worst, there
is per typical, no attribution in the following message [and in this
case, the reply seems likely to have been the immediately prior message
link as presented in the /thread/ index; but that is not always the
case, both because a reply might span the monthly index and the
threading algorithm might get /confused/ for whatever reasons it does
so, often enough that the prior message can not be safely inferred to
always be the replied-to message]:
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/201306/msg00578.html
At best the reviewer of the archives has to click on the link to the
prior message; hoping that is the message that was replied-to. Had the
question been included in the reply as quoted text, then the reviewer
may get the gist without having to read\click-on any other messages.
And at worst the reviewer has to click on many different links in the
thread, then try to guess what specific question was being answered. If
some attributions [such as the sender along with date\time] of the
message to which the reply was made had been included *above* the EOM
marker, then even without any quoted text also having been included, at
least then a reviewer of the archives could know when they have found
[finally clicked on] the specific message that had been replied-to.
Such an unattributed reply IMO also "looks like crap at
archives.midrange.com" because there is nothing [neither any quoted
text, nor attribution of date\time\sender] to clarify to the reader, to
what specific text [comment or question] or to what specific message the
reply was directed.
</rant>
midrange.com
