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" every person like Martin who wants yet more to read about Statalist insatiably"
Just want to get rid of having to repeat the advice which you do not want in the FAQ in emails to frustrated first timers. It is arguable I simply should delete these emails, but I do not. I _hate_ unsatisfied demand, particularly when the solution is clear and obvious (to me). For proof, see slide 19 of http://www.stata.com/meeting/dcconf09/dc09_weiss.pdf
HTH
Martin
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Im Auftrag von Nick Cox
Gesendet: Dienstag, 25. August 2009 19:35
An: [email protected]
Betreff: RE: st: AW: egen cut(runiform()) inconsistent across versions 10 and 11?
As FAQ maintainer I don't really want to forestall discussion of possible improvements to that document.
But I do want to make it completely clear however that adding details to the FAQ on how to use major email providers to send postings to Statalist is completely out of the question as far as I am concerned:
0. Volunteering someone else to do more work is age-old, but no thanks. Even if someone else says, "I'll do it", other problems apply. See below.
1. I don't use any of them, so even in principle this would involve trying to arrange lots of volunteers to write documentation, even once we've decided who is/is not a major provider.
2. Even once written, it would be a pain to maintain, as providers appear, disappear, change their habits, whatever.
3. For every person like Martin who wants yet more to read about Statalist insatiably there are a hundred silent others who find the FAQ too long and too complicated, or so it is to be presumed from the fact that they don't read it, or don't read it carefully.
4. It would bloat the FAQ, perhaps double it. See also 3.
5. You sign up to a provider means that you have the responsibility to find out how to use it, for goodness' sake.
6. Probably more reasons, but that's enough.
Nick
[email protected]
Martin Weiss
I have argued in favor of more prominence of the issue in the FAQ section before, without success. Still, if you made this one more prominent, something else would slide down in importance, and problems would crop up there more frequently...
What could be done, though, is adding advice for the most frequently used mail providers and programs on how to make sure the post is text-only. It took me quite some time back in the day to figure it out in Outlook...
László Sándor
You can send out plain text emails simply by one click, the rightmost
element on the formatting bar in GMail. However, it wasn't clear to me
after signing up or reading the FAQ that Statalist accepts only plain
text emails, and doesn't even send out error messages if you (or
GMail) tried to send it an HTML email.
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Martin Weiss<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> " I just realized emails set up as the default in GMail don't make it to the Statalist. Lesson learnt. (If this is a duplicate, I am very
> sorry.)"
>
>
> This is an important piece of information about gmail accounts, as I get anywhere from 1 to 5 private emails per week complaining about lack of access to Statalist. I have read all kinds of "conspiracy theories" over the last couple of months as to why posts do not make it to the list. But the default setting in the most popular email provider on the list makes for a compelling answer...
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