[nukkad] The 'nukkad' wishlist

[Harshal Chhaya <>]

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Tip of the day:  No chain letters, virus hoaxes and good luck charms. See 
<http://www.kumite.com/myths/> for a list of Internet hoaxes.
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I got about half a dozen responses to my 'if you could change one
thing' question. About half had more than one proposed change. A
few of the items were expected but some were completely unexpected.
I am thankful to the people who responded since their responses help
me understand what things need to change.  

BTW, no one has to wait for me to ask the question. All feedback,
criticism and suggestions are welcome any time.

One thing that puzzled me was that more than one person asked for
'nukkad' to be unmoderated. 'nukkad' *is* unmoderated - it has
been for the past several months. All messages are sent directly
to the list (except for 'digest' subscribers). I do not filter or
moderate the messages. I can't imagine what leads to the impression
that the list is moderated.


This email contains the suggestions as well as my responses. 

I tried to answer each person individually but I know that I was
unable to address all issues. I apologise if you did not get a personal
reply. 

One of the complaints I expected was about the filter that checks 
for original material in replies. Both Max and Rawat want it removed.

Here is my answer to Max:

    Is it really that cumbersome to delete the previous message? 
    In most cases, the blocked message includes the entire
    earlier message - headers, trailers and all. This is clearly
    useless and serves no purpose. If the reply is addressing a
    specific part of the message, why not include just that part.
    If the whole message is included how is the reader supposed to
    know what part of the message is being replied to? 
    
    I agree there have been a few instances where correctly formatted 
    messages have been blocked - mainly those that are line by 
    line replies to line by line questions. In this case the
    number of new lines is almost the same as the number of old
    lines which triggers the check and blocks the message. However,
    in all of such cases, I have either disabled the filter
    and/or slightly re-formatted the message (and have clearly 
    indicated this) and made sure the message reached the list.
    
    Why not make your reply more legible and readable by spending a 
    couple of seconds to format it? After all you wrote the reply for
    people to read and comprehend, right?
    
    Just to be clear, I could remove this filter but I need to shown
    why that would be a good thing. What will removing the check
    enable that can't be done now?



Dr.T.Vasudevan wanted HTML emails but on further questioning I 
realised that he wanted a lesser contrast between the background
and the text for easier reading. He changed his Windows color scheme
to address the problem. 

Gireesh re-iterated his suggestion of maximum 1 e-mail per person 
per day. He was willing to loosen this requirement by allowing one
email per person *per subject* per day. I understand his concern
and his desire to limit the number of messages per day but I doubt
that hard limits like the one he suggests will work. When he had
proposed this on 'nukkad' earlier this year, Indian Rediff had
cited the example of a very vibrant list (the India-D discussion
list) that withered and died due to such a limit. I think that 
each of us has to decide to limit superfluous emails. Dr. Gupta's
and Dr. Vasudevan's efforts in sending composite emails with
multiple responses in a single message are a great start. 

Maverick asked for a member profile page where members could
post some details about themselves. I think this is a good
idea. I want to tie this in the mumbai-central.com website
and have a pretty good idea of how to do this. Now, if only
I could find the time....

Maverick also wanted the 'tip of the day' to be 'tip of
the hour' or something like that. His other suggestion 
of member-supplied tips would help towards that. I started
the 'tip of the day' to help members understand some of the
list workings (no attachments, no chain letters etc.). It
mutated into its current form since I wanted to share interesting
quotes etc. through the same feature. 
If you have some hints/tips/quotes etc. that might work well
in this format (2 lines or less), send them to me and I
will add them to the database.


Rawat had the biggest list of suggestions - 13 in all. These
included the reply filter (already addressed above), daily
headlines from the Grapevine newsletter (implemented) and a 
shorter message footer (implemented from this message onwards). 
He also wanted me to get rid of the 'tip of the day'.  
Here are his other suggestions (the lines with '>' are
Rawat's). I am including these here along with my responses
so that other who have similar suggestions or any ideas
on how to implment these could chime in.


   > I would set the reply-to list instead of to original posted.
   
   I don't remember if you were on 'nukkad' when this was the case.
   There were two side-effects to this - short messages like
   'Thanks' and 'That was good' ended up being sent to the entire list
   and a couple of times messages that were meant for the single
   user were mistakenly sent to the entire list. The first was very
   annoying for all list members and the second was sometimes very
   embarassing for the replier.
   
   The current setup does not prohibit replies to the list - all you
   need to do is hit 'reply all' or 'group reply'. This allows the
   replier to conciously decide where he/she wants to send the reply.

   This avoids mishaps and as well as pointless messages.


   > I would remove confirmation of joining mail. when the users have
   > unsubscription information at every mail as well as introduction, they
   > can unsub if not wanted. or the reply-id could be for unsubscription.
   
   I have had many problems where there was no confirmation. Mischief
   makers would sign up other people without permission. In some
   cases, admin level addresses of ISPs were added to the list. You
   can imagine the problems where these people get dozens of 
   messages each day without any idea why. Many people assume that
   it is spam and complain loudly not only to me but to my ISP. 
   
   It is much, much better to use a confirmation before adding
   people to the list. It is easy to use, painless, very fast and ensures
   that some innocent mailbox is not getting bombarded with 'nukkad'
   email without asking for it.
   

   > I shall collect from net, exactly one review of each new film/
   > music/ book and post one per day.
   
   A good idea in theory but again not very practical. If everyone
   started doing this, the number of messages will increase beyond
   control. 
   
   I prefer if the members post reviews of books/music/movies/restaurants
   that they have read/listened/watched/eaten in. See Kapil's recent
   reviews. They are much more valuable than the opinion of some
   random critic.
   
   
   
   > Being in Mumbai, I will invite one celebrity per month to answer
   > mails one day.
   
   Excellent idea! And one that I have been wanting to do for years
   and years. The problem is getting a hold of said celebs. 
   
   I don't have any contacts or any way of getting a hold of
   any celebs and convincing them of participating in this excercise.
   If you or anyone else can help, we can make this happen. 


   > I would add one line in footer giving last bse/nse index-date-time.
   > It might be meaningless for non-users, but one little line will be quite
   > useful for users. also, last score. "breaking news" sometimes get posted
   > by members in any case.

   A good idea but not very easy to do. Getting the BSE/NSE data
   and formatting it for inclusion in each message could be very 
   resource consuming. Same for the score. 



   > Every month, I will ask once "if you could change one thing.."

   I agree to ask this every month but I am afraid you will reply 
   with 13 things! (-8


He had a couple of other suggestions but they were already
implemented on the list. 


Arya had one suggestion and some general observations. He
was a bit concerned that the demographics of this list are
skewed towards the male, IT professional. I don't think 
this is the case - some of the most active members are non-IT
folks. As for the low %age of girls/women on the list, it may
be that they just don't find 'nukkad' interesting. The rut that
we seem to find ourselves in almost every week - arguing about
religion - can't be much fun. 

That said, all of you are free, in fact encouraged, to let your 
friends know about this list and ask them to join it. The widely 
varying backgrounds of the people on the list make it very interesting. 
More diversity is always welcome. And to clarify, though the list
is a part of the mumbai-central.com website, it is not limited
to people from Mumbai. It is not even limited to Indians. As 
should be evident to anyone who has participated here even for 
a few days, we are a free-wheeling bunch and generally discuss 
a wide variety of topics. 

There were a couple of other message that in effect said 'keep doing
what you are doing'. Thanks for the support and encouragement.

If you have read this far, thanks.

Regards,
- 'shal

      
-- 
http://www.mumbai-central.com : Where Mumbaikars meet
      


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