I'd say the most important problem with the gateway system is #8. The people who post the original query frequently do not receive any response. This appears to me to defeat the entire purpose of the message board. Marsha L. Ensminger --- On Sat, 7/5/08, Cliff Lamere <clifflamere@nycap.rr.com> wrote: > From: Cliff Lamere <clifflamere@nycap.rr.com> > Subject: [NYRENSSE] The negatives of gatewayed messages > To: nyrensse@rootsweb.com > Date: Saturday, July 5, 2008, 12:02 AM > The list administrator asked our opinion about whether to > keep the > gateway system, so I have tried to evaluate it. Nobody has > said > anything negative about this system, so let me be the > first. > > I'm not trying to talk anyone into abondoning the > system. I just offer > some facts to weigh. Here are some reasons why people > might not like it. > > 1) You can't tell who wrote the gatewayed email (not > even your own) > without opening it. They all come from > "gc-gateway". It is fairly > important to know who wrote the email. For example, if Pat > Connors > writes an email, I will always open it no matter what the > subject is. > > 2) People seldom use even their first name at the end of a > gatewayed > message, so you don't know who wrote the message, which > makes them > definitely less personal. > > 3) Most of the time you don't know, and can't > learn, the email address > of the sender, so you can't answer privately. > > 4) You can read the gatewayed email, but the previous > message is not > included in it. It is therefore very often hard to > understand the > answer. When a subject has several respondents at once, > you just can't > tell to what the incoming email is responding. Even if > there is only > one respondent that day, you still can't tell what they > were answering. > This becomes even worse when the question was posted > several days, > weeks, or months earlier (as is often the case with message > boards). > This kind of confusion is avoided by using the message > board the way it > was intended; by visiting it. > > 5) Gatewaying forces you to go online and do some research > if you want > to understand many of the emails. > > 6) BUT, when I tried to do that twice in the past three > days, the link > to the online message took me to a screen advertising > Ancestry instead > of to the message board. I did learn that if I closed the > browser > window and clicked on the email link in the message a > second time, that > second time I would be taken to the correct place. Most > people would > not have tried it a second time. > > 7) The current system sometimes generates duplicate > messages to the > mailing list. > > 8) Gatewaying confuses a large number of the mailing list > members. > Sometimes they try to answer the question being posed on > the message > board, but they are only sending their answer to the > mailing list > members. The person who asked the question doesn't > always see a helpful > answer. > > 9) As one member complained, somedays there are a lot of > these messages > that have to be deleted. For those who check mail once a > day, that is > not a problem. For those whose computers alert them to the > fact that > there is an incoming email, checking to see what that mail > is, then > deleting it is not much of a problem. But, the large > number of > gatewayed messages on some days can mean checking many > extra times. I > suspect that some people find that to be annoying. > > 10) Unlike in past years, the mailing list Archives no > longer shows who > wrote most of the emails, because the ones that are > gatewayed don't list > a sender or their email address. They just list a > "handle" of seemingly > nonsense letters which usually makes it impossible to > recognize the > sender's name. That means that it will be harder or > impossible to > contact the sender when a genealogist finds an interesting > message in > the mailing list's Archives. > > That is a lot of negatives. You may think of others. > > Despite all of these negatives, a small percentage of list > members are > no doubt being helped, and a higher percentage don't > want to miss the > chance that a message board message might help. But, this > can be > resolved a different way. A line could be added at the > bottom of each > email from the mailing list that tells how to reach the > message board. > And an email reminder could be sent every two or three > months to the > mailing list suggesting that we check the message board. > People who > use a message board usually ask to be notified when someone > replies to > their message. So, it would not be harmful to the list > member if they > didn't read the message on the day it was written. > > I believe the negatives of gatewaying much outweigh the > positives. > However, the list administrator knows things about the > mailing list and > message board that few of us know. She knows how she would > like things > to operate, what would be easy and reasonable for her, and > what would be > best for the mailing list. I think she is in the best > position to make > the decision. > > I don't care one way or the other. I just tried to > present an analysis > of the situation. > > Cliff Lamere