A two-cent fine for Kurt.

[Rich Littleton]

Kurt,

We're fining you two-cents for your two-cent input. (-:

(We waived an additional two-cent fine for your using "whomever" in the
subjective position ....)

I don't think keyboard versus mouse is necessarily the element that makes
a program user friendly or not.  (I still prefer DOS WordPerfect 5.1, as I
stated).

The difficulty with both Pine and Freeport (more with Pine) is the
convoluted nature of the setup and the inconsistency of commands.  E.g.,
having to get out of Pine to see new mail.  E.g. having to get out of Pine
and Freeport e-mail to get to the work directory (though someone came up
with a way to fool the system).  E.g. Not having a help index so a newbie
can search for specific help. Etc., Etc.

E.g. the fact that commands mean different things in different screens
(^t, ^r, ^j, for example).

Of course one can get used to almost anything.  But one CANNOT teach
almost anything equally easily.

Kurt assumes we are reaching the goal of reaching the have nots.  ON what
does he base that?  If I say we are reaching only 10%, how do we know
which of us is correct? 

Our most recent statistic says taht only 50% stay with SCN for 6 months. 

Several, of not all, of the board members have other e-mail accounts.

This doesn't mean that the only option is to dump Pine and Freeport.  But
it does mean that we have to consider replacing them, or,

or,

or,

improve the instruction effort.

Kurt, your next SCNA dues will be assessed at $25.02.  (-:

Later,

Rich

______________________________________________________________________

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On Sun, 27 Sep 1998, Kurt Cockrum wrote:

> Here's my 2-cents worth on the MUA-causing-users-to-depart
> controversy.  How soon can you pay me my 2 cents? :)
> 
> SCN's mission, AFAIR (as far as I recall) was to provide minimal
> basic internet services to those who for various reasons couldn't
> affort to get them from existing commercial offerings, i. e. "have-nots".
> 
> Early on in the discussions of SCN people talked about significant
> portions of the populace being left out of access, as commercial
> interests scrambled for the most lucrative parts of new markets,
> leaving the rest out in the cold.
> 
> This "left-out" sector was identified as the poor and disenfranchised
> of various kinds, social-change activists and organizations, non-profits,
> neighborhood & grassroots groups, minorities (maybe even misfits :),
> and others, I think, chiefly and variously self-identified.
> 
> As far as I know, we are carrying this out.  I'm sure there are those
> who are dissatisfied, but I would imagine that that ought to be more
> substantive than dissatisfaction with the user interface of a particular
> Mail User Agent.
> 
> As long as a keyboard mediates access to things like
> e-mail, there isn't an application in the land that anybody can say
> honestly is "easy to use", but if one sticks with it, one can get
> pretty fluent.  Think about it.  Even something as simple
> as driving a stick-shift automobile was hard the first time around,
> for those of use old enough to remember.  And there were only 5 "keys":
> clutch, brake, accelerator, steering wheel and gear-shift :)
> 
> Let's not forget that it takes years and years to learn to use
> natural languages effectively, and that's even with the hardware
> assist Chomsky says is built-in (with, sadly, build-in expiration;
> adults never *do* do it well).
> 
> Frankly, the people who think StupidLandUSA provides more attractive
> services than SCN are welcome to go there, and we ought to even give
> them good recommendations as the sort of users every ISP dreams of :)
> 
> What! you say I owe you 2 cents! whaddaya mean! :)
> --kurt
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