On 31/01/12 17:42, Chen Wei wrote: > On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 08:37:00AM +1100, Scott Ferguson wrote: >>> gmail is still the most popular free mail service, >> I use it myself - I'm not sure what 'your' point is.... > sorry, I mean most popular choice in this list.
Agreed - that it's probably (the "statistics" are ambiguous, but correspond with my "beliefs") the most popular public mail server *and* webmail interface. <snipped> > I like gmail, but 'skip inbox' is hardly a mailing list friendly > feature when not using the web interface. Agreed - but it's not our call. It's Google's. I've pointed out their reasoning, and they've little reason to change that policy. Note that it applies to the web interface too. I've yet to check other free webmail accounts to see if they are different. > Once I sent several copies of the same message to the list in 2 days, > not aware this unique gmail feature. And verify the send status from > list archive might be difficult because the archive is blocked in > certain part of this planet. It's a common problem (the whole world over, the archive is now only available when using the webmail interface to backup your entire gmail account AFAIK). At this point all I/we/you can do is add a warning to the wiki, which maybe, if people take the time to read it, might reduce the number of people in the same situation. Note: that many people don't even bother to subscribe to the mailing list and just use third party new2email gateways (Debian has it's own news gateway) so they don't even read any of the list posting guidelines or associated documentation. > >> Noted I'll add documentation for gmx to the wiki on the weekend >> (time permitting). I've a list of several dozen email clients, most of which I haven't even covered for plain text posting yet. > It might be helpful to add the gmail feature to the wiki as well, if > its not there. So far I've just added Howto use Plain text (for a small selection of email user agents). Listing all the configurations for all the "desirable" capabilities of a Mail User Agent, for all clients whilst keeping the wiki page shorter than "War and Peace" isn't easy. The short version is that I've yet to find any webmail interface, free or paid, that fulfills all the minimum features of a list-friendly mail user agent. In line with Debian policy it's not appropriate to dictate which client or server people chose to use to post to, or receive mail from the list. Even recommendations should be carefully qualified. This whole subject has been discussed off-list recently, hopefully you'll see some more information over the next week - preferably in an quickly and easily digestible form ;-) > >> >>> statistic from 18K debian-user messages: Among 1514 users posted >>> to the list gmail.com 535 35.3% | yahoo.com 23 >>> 1.5% | debian.org 21 1.4% | gmx.de 20 1.3% | >>> mail.ru 18 1.2% | hotmail.com >> >> I'm not sure what those "statistics" mean. Are they all >> webmailers? Do they only represent mail sent from the webmail >> interface? What are the majority of posters using (the missing >> numbers), and what is the new/email split? Do those figures allow >> for gateways (ie. google groups, new generation, gmane, and >> others)? > they are parsed from the maildir files I received in past few > months. The statistics represents all users who had sent mail to the > list, regardless their MUAs. The invisible majority posters probably > use work or ISP mail address but I am not sure. The statistics presented represent only around 8% of the sample.... and even then don't appear to be reliable - I'll have a look over your script though (thanks), I'm sure we can scrape a little deeper :-) I've previously done a cursory sample from a much larger amount of email and come up with rather different results... The actual mail server can be determined from the IP address, the mail client from the MUA string (in a majority of cases), third party gateways (identifiable by the IP address) do a certain amount of obscuring of the originating mail/news server and news/email client. > > > News/Mail preference of total 18145 messages: email > 14646 80.7% | Gmane 3327 18.3% | Misc-NNTP > 118 0.7% | Google Group 31 0.2% | albasani.net > 23 0.1% | > > News/Mail preference of 1518 users email 1419 > 93.5% | Gmane 74 4.9% | Misc-NNTP > 14 0.9% | Google Group 8 0.5% | albasani.net > 3 0.2% | > > > Do you have any figure for point of origin ie. of gmane, google groups and (you don't appear to have covered New Generation and Bob's favourite, Nabble) what percentage used the gateway's web interface? I'd like to do a more thorough analysis including a breakdown of the correlation between non-plain text and broken thread posts - so we can better target the problem areas for the list and it's readers, as well as the problems for posters. Interesting and timely information. Cheers. -- Iceweasel/Firefox extensions for finding answers to Debian questions:- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/Scott_Ferguson/debian/ NOTE: new update available for Debian Buttons (New button for querying Debian Developer Package):- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/debian-buttons/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f2797e9.1040...@gmail.com
