Thunderbird 3

[Howell]

I prefer my business communication to have the deliverables up front with as little background as necessary. An executive summary if you will. A full explanation could follow.

And since we are posting real examples: What happens when a company changes ISPs and no one checked to make sure that what would be affected is accessible and editable.

Current situation:
• A temporary (1 week) resolution is in place such that mail is currently being delivered to *Law Firm* as of 1630 eastern.
• Depending on the configuration of the sending mail server, mail that was sent during the time that this problem has been occurring will either automatically be resent by the original sending server or need to be manually resent by the original sender.

Action Items:
• We have 1 week to transition *Law Firm* over to a new account at Postini.
• *Law Firm* should stop paying whoever it is they are paying for hosted anti-spam and ask for a refund back to October 2009.


What happened:
*Postini ReReseller* (also possibly known as *Postini ReReseller*) resold the Postini service from *Postini Reseller* to *Law Firm* and other clients. In May of 2009 two companies (and their accounting systems) merged resulting in what is now *Postini Reseller*. In October 2009 *Postini ReReseller* stopped paying for the service and still owes *Postini Reseller* $300+.

• Because of the merger *Law Firm* fell through the cracks and was not turned off in October for non-payment.
• Because their service was purchased through a reseller *Law Firm*’s account did not have the capability to modify the settings we were interested in.
• Because *Postini ReReseller* stopped paying there was no one to contact to get the settings changed we were interested in.

Tyler at *Postini Reseller* will be contacting me in one week to confirm that *Law Firm* has transitioned to another anti-spam solution.

 

[Mercutio]

If anything, your original email was unassertive leaving ambiguity to the next action from the client which is why you got a garbage response

My message clearly indicated that there were several issues that needed a response and the reason for those issues. I'm buying the parts and doing the work, but I still need to address the person paying the bills in a deferential fashion (people get kind of pissy when you say "You WILL be buying something", even when they know they need it) so they can pretend they know what I'm talking about and that they're still theoretically the one making the decision.

None of this has to do with an email client, but basic adaptive ways of interacting with the millions of styles of people who write email.

So it's my fault his mail client encourages improper style in replies and he therefore never learned proper behavior?

Sorry, don't buy it.

I compose mail using full sentences and paragraphs and with correct attribution. Everyone else should, too. The effort required is really minimal. I can sort-of see an exception for composing email on a phone, but about the time you need to include any quoted text at all in a reply you should probably think really hard about using a real mail client anyway.

The only reason I can see that more people don't format their mail properly is the incorrect default behavior of a couple common Email clients.

 

[Mercutio]

I prefer my business communication to have the deliverables up front with as little background as necessary. An executive summary if you will. A full explanation could follow.

I prefer to believe that the people I'm dealing with are literate.

 

[ddrueding]

I prefer to believe that the people I'm dealing with are literate.

That would be the problem

I'll prescribe more Dilbert until the condition improves.

 

[LunarMist]

I prefer to believe that the people I'm dealing with are literate.

Really? I would make no such assumption in the current century.

 

[LunarMist]

Damn. How do you post so fast?

 

[ddrueding]

There were 6 minutes between his post and yours. I took 2. That isn't really that fast.

All depends on how intensely I'm procrastinating at work

 

[sechs]

Merc's wrong and the rest of us are right. So, let's get back on topic.

I'm expecting that the next version of Eudora will actually come out of infinite beta this year, and it will be based on Thunderbird 3.

Is Thunderbird really such a turkey?

 

[Howell]

I prefer to believe that the people I'm dealing with are literate.

Good luck with that. Sometimes people are more ambiguous than they think they are. As you've noted; overuse of pronouns are a big part of that.

 

[udaman]

My message clearly indicated that there were several issues that needed a response and the reason for those issues. I'm buying the parts and doing the work, but I still need to address the person paying the bills in a deferential fashion (people get kind of pissy when you say "You WILL be buying something", even when they know they need it) so they can pretend they know what I'm talking about and that they're still theoretically the one making the decision.



So it's my fault his mail client encourages improper style in replies and he therefore never learned proper behavior?

Sorry, don't buy it.

I compose mail using full sentences and paragraphs and with correct attribution. Everyone else should, too. The effort required is really minimal. I can sort-of see an exception for composing email on a phone, but about the time you need to include any quoted text at all in a reply you should probably think really hard about using a real mail client anyway.

The only reason I can see that more people don't format their mail properly is the incorrect default behavior of a couple common Email clients.

Man, that was long Merc, give me a headache . U guys r all old farts

^I blame texting/sexting/Twitteriffic™ via smartphones...by proxy Tila Tequila ...Do'h.

 

[Stinker]

You guys are too funny.

 

[Handruin]

It's the never ending bitching of who wants to be right.

 

[time]

I agree with Mercutio. It's not unique to email, but you guys are trying to make out that email is 'special'. ANY other type of business document will mention the context before the response.

Yes, I'm pretty sure it was introduced by Outlook. Every other email client that I've ever used, quotes inline, and I've tried quite a few.

If you view emails in a thread structure, guess which one is at the top?

It's true that emails often become hopelessly bloated the further down the email you go, partly because of ridiculous disclaimers and antivirus messages. But mainly because people are too lazy to indicate the context and instead just quote the whole damn email, often including any attachments.

If you're simply trying to preserve an entire correspondence history to forward to someone else, you can always quote as an attachment.

It's pretty basic, our written language is designed to be read from top to bottom, not with backwards and forwards jumps between paragraphs.

 

[Tannin]

It's true that emails often become hopelessly bloated the further down the email you go, partly because of ridiculous disclaimers and antivirus messages. But mainly because people are too lazy to indicate the context and instead just quote the whole damn email, often including any attachments.

Yes, yes, yes, YES! I bloody hate it when ignorant fools send me email with three lines of content and 5432 lines of quoted older correspondence, most of it probably pertaining to the timber I was going to supply them with for building the Ark.

 

[Handruin]

I've often times seen that...the email sent to me reads: "what do you think of this?" and there are 10 emails quoted below.

 

[mubs]

Yes, yes, yes, YES! I bloody hate it when ignorant fools send me email with three lines of content and 5432 lines of quoted older correspondence, most of it probably pertaining to the timber I was going to supply them with for building the Ark.

Had no idea you were that old...

 

[Tannin]

Had no idea you were that old...

I never used to feel it, mate. Always said that I felt as fresh as a daisy and good for another half-dozen millennia at least.

But all that was before I met the peace-of-mind destroyer. Life just hasn't been the same since then.


(Her name? Tea!)

 

[Tea]

I heard that!

 

[Tannin]

woops!

 

[Chewy509]

So if no-one apart from CougTek and I use it, what do people use for a POP3/IMAP client?

I've just installed v3, so am using it now... (changed from web interface for email hosted by my ISP).

Haven't found anything wrong with it so far? (I also have the calendar plugin installed for task management).

 

[Chewy509]

top post vs bottom post

re: location of replies.

IETF RFC 1855, section 3.1.1.

If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make
sure readers understand when they start to read your response.

'nough said.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855

 

[Mercutio]

It's the never ending bitching of who wants to be right.

I have history and apparently people who write RFCs on my side.

You have a poor decision on the part of whomever developed Outlook before Microsoft bought it.

I win.

 

[Handruin]

Some quoted RFC from the words most poorly formatted website (which you'd be insane to try and read from) isn't the best way to take the de facto standard on something people use daily. That's probably the lamest reason I've heard today, but if it makes you feel better, then you can continue to believe you've won.

 

[Mercutio]

You'd rather that the standard be set by a design decision from Microsoft?

 

[Handruin]

If my choice was between the designers of that RFC page and Microsoft, yes, but otherwise nope. Considering you said the format was set by Outlook before Microsoft bought them, the point is moot anyway.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't recall Microsoft Mail (the mail system they offered before Exchange and Outlook) or cc:Mail (the precursor to Lotus Notes) doing things the wrong way, either.

As with so many things, it's all Outlook's fault.

 

[Handruin]

As with so many things, it's all Outlook's fault.

Hooray, we agree on something!