Reading e-mail.

E-mail (and most non-realtime) discussions are not really
conversations
the same way realtime voice or IM chat is a conversation. 
Whereas in a
dialogue one has the benefit of having the last few minutes
of dialogue
cached and one's attention is (or should be) on the
discussion at hand,
replies to or comments on a written message in a days or
weeks long (or
even months long) discussion often arrive after well after
the original
email or posting.

How does one provide context to what is otherwise a
temporally orphaned
post?  Many webforums place all the posts together with some
cues as to
which post is response to which post (often visual,
sometimes semantic,
or structural in nature).  Most of us don't read mail with
every single
message in a thread (and what defines a thread?) all laid
out together,
ready to be read at once so we can establish context, maybe
a few email
messages at once at most (or perhaps those are just my email
habits).

Perhaps the MUAs just aren't cut out for this sort of thing,
on showing
us an entire email thread at once so that every message can
be read and
understood in the full context of all the other messages. 
Perhaps some
of you don't need that context since you remember all of the
many email
discussions you have had.  

Imagine the voicemail reply to a week old yes or no question
consisting
of a single word "Yes" (or "No"). 
"Yes" to what?  Who left the message
for me?  

And to help make my point, I shall include or quote no other
messages.

--Jon

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Jon, I agree with what you wrote about the difference
between live
conversations and the time-delayed conversations of email. 
However, I
disagree with your apparent conclusion that quoting text is
the best or only
solution.

I believe that fully developed thoughts stand well on their
own, and not
only make it easier for folks who are relying on software to
read their
emails to them, but also encourage us all to think our ideas
throgh more
completely, and consider how our ideas might seem to the
people reading what
we write.  As example, if I am forced to reiterate your
ideas back to you,
as I did at the beginning of this email, then that gives you
the best
possible chance to spot a misunderstanding on my part,
before the
conversation goes any further.

I cannot imagine folks a hundred years ago, cutting up each
other's letters
and gluing them into the outgoing mail with scissors and
mucilage.  If they
were able write full paragraphs with topic sentences and
full context,
surely computers have not robbed us of that ability.

I will also quote no text, to show how these thoughts stand
on their own.

--
Lyman Lockwood
Webmaster, Programmer/Analyst-II
PP-CS Information Systems Group
3-8467



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We are about to purchase an SSL certificate for our web
server.  To 
do this we need to generate a CSR and designate an
"authorizing 
contact".

Are there university specific rules for how the CSR is
filled out? 
I'm sort of expecting that there is specific wording we are
supposed 
to be using for organization name, for instance.  Also, is
there a 
university designated authorizing contact we are supposed to
use?



Randall


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