On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 15:11:36 -0600
John Fenley <pontifier(_at_)hotmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
Imagine visiting a friend, and discovering they have a doorman. The
doorman won't let you in, until you show photo ID, answer a few
questions, and maybe give him a tip. With such a system, you'll
discover that you'll lose most of your friends. The only people
willing to deal with such a system will be close relatives asking you
for money, or bill collectors.
The attitude of the doorman is the main issue there, not that there is
a doorman.
Real world example of a C/R system: Visitor: (pushes doorbell)Ding
Dong Resident: (through intercom) Who is it? Visitor: (through
intercom)It's Steve. Resident: (through intercom) Oh, ok. Let me buzz
you in. Door: Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz *click*
Roughly 60% of the mail I write is to people I don't know, and for which
I don't care (quite literally, zero interest and in a few cases,
negative interest) if those particular people actually receive the
message. These are not always mailing list posts -- fairly often they
are off-list replies to list posts.
In the past year (checking my logs), I've received ~50
challenge/response replies to such messages (could be more, but that's
all my quick greps across my archival mail folders found). Of that set,
I've responded to precisely three of them. three. Three out of fifty.
What is perhaps interesting is why I replied to those three
challenges: They were C/R systems in front of a mailing list and a
role address, not in front of a personal address.
As far as C/R systems for personal mail I've replied to precisely none
of them. Not one out of more than 40 of them. That's right, zero,
none, nada, zip, zilcho, the big nothin', the empty set.
Of those ~50 challenges, more than 40 were of the simple form, "Reply to
this message to answer this challenge," requiring nothing more of me
then hitting "reply" and "send" -- no special typing, reading, graphics,
image translation, post formatting, token inclusion, or anything else
required. Just, "reply" and "send". Hardly an onerous, difficult, or
particularly challenging requirement. Yet, again, I've not replied to a
single one of those challenges.
Perhaps I'm a bastard curmudgeon (likely true), but if so, it seems to
be a common form of irascibility that has been frequently espoused on
this list and others.
Curious that huh? The doorman was polite, even solicitous. The
challenge was well worded, easily understood, and phrased in a polite
and inviting manner. The challenge was even less taxing and even more
trivial than your, "Who is it?" and yet it wasn't answered, not just
once, but over 40 times -- which reveals the problem: It is not what the
challenge is, or how it is phrased, but that there is one.
The problem isn't what the challenge is, it is that there _is_ a
challenge, that there is a bar to be crossed, that in some way I must do
something extra to win your ear, your screen, your attention.
Certainly, there are cases in which I'm willing to go that extra inch,
to hit those two keys to send an email reply to a challenge -- after all
I've done it thrice, a massive 6% of the cases.
Now, can we move on from the attempts trench warfare?
I happen to like C/R systems for certain, specific, uses, but they are
not a golden bullet. At this point I'm much more interested in building
a framework for consent systems that we can hang various things one,
like C/R systems and others, as methods of expressing, accomplishing,
and managing consensual relationships, without regard for the specific
of how that particular relationship was achieved.
--
J C Lawrence
---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw(_at_)kanga(_dot_)nu He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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