[Coco] One point of view

[William Astle]

Wayne Campbell wrote:
<snip>
> If response, body of message history

(Note: I am writing this to provide a counterpoint, not to be
argumentative.)

(Disclaimer: this message represents my opinions which are not
necessarily the opinions of the list operator or anyone else on the planet.)

Your message format suggestion is quite reasonable, especially for
private correspondence where there may not be an archive of any sort. In
fact, I have found such methodology useful in business correspondence.

However, in the case of mailing lists or news groups where archives do
exist, I must respectfully disagree with the idea of maintaining the
entire history of a discussion indefinitely. That is plain wasteful.

Wearing my hat as a network operator, I am horrified by such a
suggestion directed at a mailling list. It may not sound like much, but
say you have an average of 20K of message history flying around attached
to every message sent to the list. If the list has 500 members, that
gives an average 10MB wasted traffic for every message to the list.
Still doesn't sound like much, but if a list has, say, 20 messages a
day, that turns into 200MB wasted of traffic daily. Assume a list
hosting operation will usually be hosting hundreds if not thousands of
lists, if everyone followed the "maintain the history" idea, the amount
of waste traffic becomes non-trivial. To further exacerbate the problem,
this waste traffic also turns into wasted storage for lists that are
archived.

This list, for instance, *does* have an archive. It can be found by
following the footer at the bottom of *every* message. Someone who
really must see the history of the discussion can view the archives.
Thus it is pointless to include more than the actual points being
replied to and, *at most*, the entire message being replied to if it is
not long. The only reason for including the most recent message would be
for context.

Consider that, in many instances, the operators of lists pay by the
gigabyte (or even megabyte) for storage space for archives. They may
even pay by the gigabyte (or even megabyte) for bandwidth. If I were a
list operator under such circumstances, I would also be miffed by any
suggestion (or actual behaviour) which generates any noticeable volume
of excess traffic.

Consider also the poor folks reading messages on a potentially limited
device, say a PDA or what have you, where their wireless providers
charge assinine rates for data traffic? If they want to read a message,
they have no option to avoid downloading the extra 20K or so of history
which may cost them a non-trivial amount when compounded over multiple
messages. Remember, you know nothing about the recipients of a message
sent in a public forum so you cannot assume that what is painless to
receive for you is painless to receive for your recipients.

Note that I have specifically stepped back from the issue of top post
vs. bottom post as it makes little difference to my point and has been
hashed out in opposing monologues repeatedly.

-- 
William Astle