From: David Ross (ross_at_math.hawaii.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 05 1997 - 14:31:36 EST
Ken Manheimer wrote:
> Digests are a major boon - by packaging the day's traffic in a single
> email message, other email isn't obscured, and often entire
> conversations are collected together.
Digesting can be both a boon and a bust. In addition to what you say,
there is also the operational advantage that since undigested listers
often answer questions in the same digest in which they're asked, it
cuts down on the number of duplicate answers.
However, individual messages can't be easily deleted in a digest (unless
the digest is 'burst', losing any advantages), and overquoting is trebly
annoying in a digest. (I was one one list where the traffic grew to 100
messages/day, of which about 2% were extremely useful to me. Switching
to digests helped for a while, until 2-3 posters joined who had the habit
of quoting an entire thread, then adding a one-line followup [often
just the words "I agree"]. Average digest length exceeded 10K lines!
Unbearable. Unfortunately, a few posters on this list are prone to
similar overquoting. You know who you are:-)
Now I'll shut up.
- David
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