I sent Esther this about the need for feedback in mail software and standards.
I'll pass this on to more appropriate people but would like to bend your ear on a marginally related riff of my own.
The problem is NO FEEDBACK
People (understandably) want to use email without understanding it, its mechanism, its realities. Unfortunately, this puts the IT department in a world like that of the early 1900's when a world of horse riders was trying to use cars in the way they used horses. The result is users who regard email as a sort of problematic tool that might as well be magic. Not understanding it, they bang on it and misuse it in the most preposterous ways, like: = having a 500MB inbox under IMAP which they don't understand is a single file...and wonder why it takes so long to open. The idea of never taking out the garbage would never happen at home, but it happens in their inbox = attaching a 200 MB file to a mail message, and a) not knowing that it was 200 MB or even knowing what 200MB means, b) wondering why it doesn't go through and c) repeatedly resending it and d) getting furious at IT that the goddamn magic isn't working = attaching a 1 MB file to a mail sent to all 3000 accounts in a small liberal arts college, which has an effect somewhat like the Titanic hitting the iceberg. And the 1MB attach was a scanned copy of a faxed cellular phone service offer...scanned in 24bit color complete with every flyspeck.
The problem is feedback, it's lack. The mail software, indeed the Intenet mail standards, such as IMAP and POP and,almost all software, have no provision for informing the user when they are doing something very demanding (or stupid or abusive). When software and standards are written, they should include feedback mechanisms that inform and direct the users to appropriate use.
Our bodies (except for a very few and endangered individuals) has a pain mechanism to give us feedback. Software and standards need this too.
--
Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources
Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504
sdean@bard.edu voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035