🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 11 Nov 1994, David S. Eitelbach wrote:

> "Post follow-up message to news group(s)?"
>
> The docs say you can suppress this prompt if you want Pine to
> assume you DO want to post as well as reply. What if you DON'T?

How are you going to support a reply WITH post then?

> People used to the older version just bang on "y" when they see
> a prompt while replying. I've already seen one case of private
> email accidentally posted to a group because of this dangerous
> flexibility in Pine. I expect to see more such choice morsels.

Dangerous flexibility? How about people-who-don't-bother-to-read are
dangerous? You mean they also always reply with included message AND to
all recipients? Probably the same people who publicly post those very
informing 'Thank you for your reply' on mailing lists.

> But it was embarrassing to those concerned. It would be an even
> more flexible program if this feature could be disabled with a
> do NOT post default.

There are two ways to learn things: inform yourself beforehand, and by
trial-and-error.

I guess those concerned know better now.

This sounds like a harsh reply (well, it is) but I just think that Pine
should not be changed for every user that has some problem he/she created
on his/her own. A UI still requires some thought of its user, we haven't
any UI's connected directly to our brains yet.


Richard.

R.Kooijman@et.tudelft.nl (Richard Kooijman) writes:
>On Fri, 11 Nov 1994, David S. Eitelbach wrote:
>> "Post follow-up message to news group(s)?"
>>
>> The docs say you can suppress this prompt if you want Pine to
>> assume you DO want to post as well as reply. What if you DON'T?
>
>How are you going to support a reply WITH post then?

I think David's request is a good one.  It would be nice if there were
three variables, maybe called:

  enable-news-post-in-mail-folder
  news-post-without-validation-in-mail-folder
  news-post-without-validation-in-newsgroup

For what I think David wants he would have enable-news-post-in-mail-folder
*not* X'd.  I'd recommend having all three of them *not* X'd as the default.
To answer Richard's question about replying simultaneously through mail
and news, you would go to the newsgroup and reply to the message there
(that way you know that the message was actually posted so it is proper
netiquette to respond publicly).

Just an idea,
Nancy

--
 /\_/\
( o.o )   Nancy McGough       http://www.jazzie.com/ii/
 > ^ <    Infinite Ink        ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii

dseitel@crl.com (David S. Eitelbach) writes:

 >In cases where someone replied to you out of a newsgroup, when
 >you reply in turn, you get a prompt about whether or not to
 >include the message in the reply, followed by a _second_ prompt:

 >"Post follow-up message to news group(s)?"

 >The docs say you can suppress this prompt if you want Pine to
 >assume you DO want to post as well as reply. What if you DON'T?

 >How the heck can you turn it off entirely *without Pine assuming
 >you want to post too?*

 >People used to the older version just bang on "y" when they see
 >a prompt while replying. I've already seen one case of private
 >email accidentally posted to a group because of this dangerous
 >flexibility in Pine. I expect to see more such choice morsels.

 >But it was embarrassing to those concerned. It would be an even
 >more flexible program if this feature could be disabled with a
 >do NOT post default.

 >Thanks for any and all help.
 >David S. Eitelbach
 >dseitel@crl.com

I have stated before that I cannot imagine a situation in which I wanted to
answer yes.  I cannot find a reliable way to tell whether it was the
intention of the sender for the mail to be private or public.  I HAVE to
assume that if I received it in mail then it is private.  If the discussion
is to be carried on in public, then I would have encountered the message in
a newsgroup.  When I post a reply and cc it to the original poster
(something that is very easy to do with nn), I always alert the reader of
the mail message

Posted and mailed.

I think the current behavior of pine is dangerous and useless and do not
want to take responsibility for the consequences and have therefore
refrained from installing it at my site, where I do almost all the free
software installation and maintenance.  The rest of the site is running
3.89.  The main reason I upgraded was for the new default alt editor
support.

I want to be able to disable this behavior sitewide either at compile time
or with the site config file.


--
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)313-762-9765   ___________________
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt. Inst.    /   _____  ______
  Flint, MI 48504      ellis@nova.gmi.edu               /        / /  /  / /
  Gopher,chimera,nn,tin,jove,modems, free code is best!/________/ /  /  / /

R.Kooijman@et.tudelft.nl (Richard Kooijman) writes:

 >On Fri, 11 Nov 1994, David S. Eitelbach wrote:

 >> "Post follow-up message to news group(s)?"
 >>
 >> The docs say you can suppress this prompt if you want Pine to
 >> assume you DO want to post as well as reply. What if you DON'T?

 >How are you going to support a reply WITH post then?

I have said this a number of times:  I can hardly imagine a case where this
is called for, appropriate OR needed.  Despite the insistence of many people
on this group to the contrary, many people prefer to think of mail as a
private activity, while posting is a public activity.  For those of us who
want it, pine should be configurable to be more mode oriented on this
issue.  This is almost as bad as Bcc's that aren't.

 >> People used to the older version just bang on "y" when they see
 >> a prompt while replying. I've already seen one case of private
 >> email accidentally posted to a group because of this dangerous
 >> flexibility in Pine. I expect to see more such choice morsels.

 >Dangerous flexibility? How about people-who-don't-bother-to-read are
 >dangerous? You mean they also always reply with included message AND to
 >all recipients? Probably the same people who publicly post those very
 >informing 'Thank you for your reply' on mailing lists.

Frequently used tools should be configurable so that a minimum of care is
needed to insure reasonable default behavior, selectable by the sysadmin
and/or user.  One of the advantages of pine < 3.90 was that it had generally
less dangerous behavior than elm, partly from lessened flexibility in some
areas.

 >> But it was embarrassing to those concerned. It would be an even
 >> more flexible program if this feature could be disabled with a
 >> do NOT post default.

 >There are two ways to learn things: inform yourself beforehand, and by
 >trial-and-error.

Cars should not be built with the control pedals interchanged, particularly
when they are touted to novices for their ease of use.  "We decided to put
the accelerator under the left foot because it takes less strength than the
clutch, which we put under the right foot."

 >I guess those concerned know better now.

 >This sounds like a harsh reply (well, it is) but I just think that Pine
 >should not be changed for every user that has some problem he/she created
 >on his/her own. A UI still requires some thought of its user, we haven't
 >any UI's connected directly to our brains yet.

All some of us are asking for is to make this insane behavior configurable.

And to fix Bcc.


 >Richard.


--
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)313-762-9765   ___________________
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt. Inst.    /   _____  ______
  Flint, MI 48504      ellis@nova.gmi.edu               /        / /  /  / /
  Gopher,chimera,nn,tin,jove,modems, free code is best!/________/ /  /  / /

Nancy McGough <nancym@ii.com> writes:

 >R.Kooijman@et.tudelft.nl (Richard Kooijman) writes:
 >>On Fri, 11 Nov 1994, David S. Eitelbach wrote:
 >>> "Post follow-up message to news group(s)?"
 >>>
 >>> The docs say you can suppress this prompt if you want Pine to
 >>> assume you DO want to post as well as reply. What if you DON'T?
 >>
 >>How are you going to support a reply WITH post then?

 >I think David's request is a good one.  It would be nice if there were
 >three variables, maybe called:

 >  enable-news-post-in-mail-folder
 >  news-post-without-validation-in-mail-folder
 >  news-post-without-validation-in-newsgroup

 >For what I think David wants he would have enable-news-post-in-mail-folder
 >*not* X'd.  I'd recommend having all three of them *not* X'd as the default.
 >To answer Richard's question about replying simultaneously through mail
 >and news, you would go to the newsgroup and reply to the message there
 >(that way you know that the message was actually posted so it is proper
 >netiquette to respond publicly).

Perfect suggestion!  Every last word of it!  Let people choose insane
behavior, but make the default as conservative as possible.

 >Just an idea,

Not!  A GREAT idea.

 >Nancy

 >--
 > /\_/\
 >( o.o )   Nancy McGough       http://www.jazzie.com/ii/
 > > ^ <    Infinite Ink        ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii

--
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)313-762-9765   ___________________
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt. Inst.    /   _____  ______
  Flint, MI 48504      ellis@nova.gmi.edu               /        / /  /  / /
  Gopher,chimera,nn,tin,jove,modems, free code is best!/________/ /  /  / /

Richard Kooijman wrote:

> Dangerous flexibility? How about people-who-don't-bother-to-read are
> dangerous? You mean they also always reply with included message AND to
> all recipients? Probably the same people who publicly post those very
> informing 'Thank you for your reply' on mailing lists.

> There are two ways to learn things: inform yourself beforehand, and by
> trial-and-error.

> I guess those concerned know better now.

> Man.....

If you could get down off your hind legs for a minute, you might see
that the person whose private email was posted was not the person who
answered the prompt with a yes--but rather an entirely innocent person.

Since you missed it the first time, I'll try again with an example: You
are thinking of buying an Acme computer and you post to comp.comp.acme,
asking what owners of Acme think. I own an Acme and don't like it at all.
Rather than post a reply and get flamed for not liking Acmes, I email you
with my impressions from my newsreader. You get the email and read it in
Pine. You have some followup questions. In emailing me, you don't read
the second prompt and the message is posted to the group as well as mailed.
Not my fault, is it?

> This sounds like a harsh reply (well, it is) but I just think that Pine
> should not be changed for every user that has some problem he/she created
> on his/her own. A UI still requires some thought of its user, we haven't
> any UI's connected directly to our brains yet.

I wish you had shown us all by example, in reading my first message,
how "some thought" can prevent us from going off on the wrong tack.

I don't think Pine should be regarded as something brought down from the
Mount on stone tablets--at least not in its present form.

It's just silly to blame poor software design on "lazy" users.

David S. Eitelbach
dseitel@crl.com

On 14 Nov 1994, David S. Eitelbach wrote:

>
> Since you missed it the first time, I'll try again with an example: You
> are thinking of buying an Acme computer and you post to comp.comp.acme,
> asking what owners of Acme think. I own an Acme and don't like it at all.
> Rather than post a reply and get flamed for not liking Acmes, I email you
> with my impressions from my newsreader. You get the email and read it in
> Pine. You have some followup questions. In emailing me, you don't read
> the second prompt and the message is posted to the group as well as mailed.
> Not my fault, is it?
>

Now we are getting to the root of the problem.  What you are saying is
that the email message you recieved had a header

	Newsgroups: comp.comp.acme

in it.  Pine's interpretation of that header is that the message was posted
to the newsgroup.  This interpretation conforms to all RFC specifications of
the Newsgroups: header than I am aware of.  In any case, the default for the
prompt you are so strenuously objecting to is NO, so a user would have to
press 'Y' to post the reply to the group.  Anyone in the habit of blindly
hitting 'Y' at every prompt is bound to get some unexpected results.

For more discussion of the Newsgroups: header, see the flamewar that has been
raging in comp.mail.headers for the last month or so.  Please do not restart
it here, thanks.

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    dlm@cac.washington.edu  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA

David L Miller wrote:
> Now we are getting to the root of the problem.

No we're not. The problem is that the way pine is now configured,
the PRIVATE email of an innocent person can be inadvertently posted
publicly by someone else. That's the problem--not whether or not
Pine passed RFC muster.

> Pine's interpretation of that header is that the message was
> posted to the newsgroup.  This interpretation conforms to all RFC
> specifications of the Newsgroups: header than I am aware of.

So, I eat in a restaurant. I get food poisoning. I complain to
the manager and he tells me the food was all inspected. Great!

> In any case, the default for the prompt you are so strenuously
> objecting to is NO, so a user would have to press 'Y' to post
> the reply to the group.

The user just pressed a "Y" in the immediately preceeding step.
You make it sound like he has to go out of his way to press "Y".
This is misleading.

Why not make the posting default changeable? Ms. Nancy McGough
may have pointed the way on how to do this early in the thread.
If there is some reason why it *can't* be done, fine. But to deny
that there is a problem is wrongheaded.

> Anyone in the habit of blindly hitting 'Y' at every prompt is
> bound to get some unexpected results.

You fellows seem to feel some sense of poetic justice is being
served here. That is simply not the case and suggests that you
do not yet understand what is happening: that the private email
that gets posted is *not* that of the person hitting the wrong
key. This is the key point and one that you--and especially Mr.
Kooijman--seem to have missed.

Anyone can replicate the problem by using a test group, BTW.
No need to take my word for it.

I will try to explain the scenario more clearly:

You are thinking of buying an Acme computer and you post to
comp.comp.acme, asking what owners of Acme think. I own an Acme and
don't like it at all. Rather than post a reply and get flamed for not
liking Acmes, I email you with my impressions from my newsreader. You
get the email and read it in Pine. You have some followup questions.
You hit "r" for reply. Then you hit "y" to include MY PRIVATE EMAIL
message in your reply. So far, so good. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
But now the second prompt, about also posting, comes--and you goof.
With your finger still on the "Y" key, you hit "Y" just like on the
last, so familiar, prompt. This will cause your reply *and my
incorporated private email* to be publicly posted! You write down your
comments and questions and send it. Since you didn't handle the second
prompt properly, MY PRIVATE EMAIL, AS PART OF YOUR ALSO POSTED REPLY,
IS NOW POSTED TO A PUBLIC NEWSGROUP THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN.

It's dangerous. It stinks. And it's already happening.

Ironically, Pine is touted as the choice for novice users.

> For more discussion of the Newsgroups: header, see the flamewar
> that has been raging in comp.mail.headers for the last month or
> so.  Please do not restart it here, thanks.

This would have been more credibly directed toward Mr. Kooijman
earlier in the thread, Mr. Miller.

David S. Eitelbach
dseitel@crl.com

dseitel@crl.com (David S. Eitelbach) writes:

 >David L Miller wrote:
 >> Now we are getting to the root of the problem.

 >No we're not. The problem is that the way pine is now configured,
 >the PRIVATE email of an innocent person can be inadvertently posted
 >publicly by someone else. That's the problem--not whether or not
 >Pine passed RFC muster.
[...]
 >It's dangerous. It stinks. And it's already happening.

 >Ironically, Pine is touted as the choice for novice users.

At least it does not offer the novice the choice of editing her spool file
with vi, as elm does, which results in a number of corrupted mail spool
files each week at our site.

 >> For more discussion of the Newsgroups: header, see the flamewar
 >> that has been raging in comp.mail.headers for the last month or
 >> so.  Please do not restart it here, thanks.

There would be no need to carry on about this if the team would admit that
there is more than one cognitive map of how news and mail work.  They also
want to insist that there is no modality between news and mail usage.

 >This would have been more credibly directed toward Mr. Kooijman
 >earlier in the thread, Mr. Miller.

 >David S. Eitelbach
 >dseitel@crl.com

The failure to make this configurable befouls an otherwise excellent product
(except the the Bcc problem).

Standing firm, side by side by side.

--
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)313-762-9765   ___________________
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt. Inst.    /   _____  ______
  Flint, MI 48504      ellis@nova.gmi.edu               /        / /  /  / /
  Gopher,chimera,nn,tin,jove,modems, free code is best!/________/ /  /  / /

dseitel@crl.com (David S. Eitelbach) writes:
>In cases where someone replied to you out of a newsgroup, when
>you reply in turn, you get a prompt about whether or not to
>include the message in the reply, followed by a _second_ prompt:
>
>"Post follow-up message to news group(s)?"

>How the heck can you turn it off entirely *without Pine assuming
>you want to post too?*

What I'm doing is using procmail and formail to process my
incoming mail messages.  If a message contains a Newsgroups
header I change it to Old-Newsgroups and then Pine won't ask
me whether I want to post my response.  Here's the recipe I'm
using:

:0 fhw
* ^Newsgroups:
| formail -i Newsgroups:

For more info about setting up procmail see my "Filtering
Mail FAQ" that I posted this week.


Another thing I've done is set up my newsreader (nn) to
use this for mailing:

 | formail -i Newsgroups: | /usr/lib/sendmail -t

This way all messages that I mail from nn have an Old-Newsgroups
header rather than a Newsgroups header so that anyone who receives
it in Pine will not be asked whether they want to post their
response to me.

I hope this is helpful,
Nancy

--
 /\_/\
( o.o )   Nancy McGough       http://www.jazzie.com/ii/
 > ^ <    Infinite Ink        ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii