On Sat, Nov 9, 2024 at 4:46 AM Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
It’s been decades since the last time I used this option.. and that was on an actual listserv run on lsoft.com, early 2000s.
Yes.. Digest modes are generally unsuitable for active participation in a mailing list. I think the entire purpose of Digest mode is to minimize traffic for users who are interested solely in skimming through everything that was written days or weeks after discussion took place. You would not have any good or convenient way to pick an item out of a text digest to answer it, and you don't have the latest responses if it's still an active conversation at the time you are reading the digest. I would say you should always switch Off digest mode before posting anything, and just wait up to a day to receive a new post on that thread to reply to. Make sure to check mailing list archives for replies during the time between your most recent received digest and the Time you turned off the feature. You may very well find that someone else has written what your planned reply was going to say, and you didn't see that part of the conversation yet because you were in digest mode. If Nobody posts to the thread for you to reply to, then make a New post of your own after waiting an entire 24 hours, but manually copy the re: Subject. It will break the thread in the same way as if you're still using older email software that was never updated to add support for the new References: and In-reply-to: headers introduced in 2001. These days just subscribed from a gmail because threaded posts, keyboard
shortcuts for email actions and what not. Makes it very easy to handle high traffic mailing lists.
-- -J