two gripes about Evolution ...

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 22:32 12/15/2003, Clifford Snow wrote:
>You can flag received messages that are important to you.  What you want
>is the sender to determine how important messages are for the
>recipient.  Let the recipient choose.  They can use the powers of most
>mail clients to help them organize messages to sort their mail.  Don't
>assume the sender has that right.

Oh, for Pete's sake!

<rant>
This is not about "choice" or anyone's "right" to determine anything... and 
by flagging a message as Important when I send it I am not forcing anyone 
to do anything. Jeez... sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Mail clients that allow me (a.k.a. "the sender") to flag a message with 
higher priority give me the convenience of indicating to the recipient that 
this message is, for some reason, of a higher priority TO ME. Period, end 
of story, no political, libertarian, or totalitarian subtleties. I can just 
as well write "urgent" on the outside of a paper envelope.

Does this force the recipient to comply, give it special treatment, or even 
acknowledge such a flag? Not at all. He/she can disregard it entirely if 
desired. Or the recipient can actually pay some attention if, IN HIS 
OPINION, a message that I consider urgent is to be treated differently from 
other mail in any way. A case in point: when I send emails to my 
subordinates, I assure you that they care about which messages I think 
deserve a quicker response. Then again, other recipients may not give a damn.

And yes, when I receive messages, I _would_ like to know if the sender 
considers a particular message to be more important than others. I may or 
may not do anything about it, depending on who the sender is and how my 
workload is, but I would like to know.

Removing or omitting the ability to mark sent messages with higher or lower 
priority is NOT a good thing. It removes choice, which you so fervently 
espouse. Having that choice does not force anything upon the recipient. 
Evolution is going to lose points with most corporate users, and many other 
folks, for not having this. Why-oh-why would this become an issue of rights 
and choice? Good grief!
</rant>


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com