--- "Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com> wrote:
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>
I agree completely.
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"Never memorize what you can look up." -Albert Einstein