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<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid64"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">It has become very clear from
recent discussions that how much </span><span
class="author-g-sehws9rse8htilr5">(if at all) </span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">a person is bothered by the
lack of a newsgroup presentation of Thunderbird-related
newsgroups depends heavily on personal working style. For many
folks, the mailing list presentation works, if not well, at
least Well Enough. However, it's also clear that there are
non-trivial usability issues in the tb-planning community with
the current email-only presentation (mostly in Thunderbird, but
also in a few other clients). </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid7"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid66"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">Here's a short summary of the
most important interests of multiple people in the tb-planning
community that are not met by the current email-only
presentation of group conversations:</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid9"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid67"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">* they are not automatically
separated from the Inbox, which is experienced as clutter </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid68"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">* the unread count for them is
propagated to the folder pane, dock, and biff, which feels like
clutter and is distracting </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid12"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">* it's difficult to interact
with historical or in-progress discussions </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid110"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">* t</span><span
class="author-g-sehws9rse8htilr5">here is a</span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3"> barrier to entry and exit for
participation</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid14"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">* some tools for dealing with
volume (watch, ignore, ...) are missing or inferior to that of
newsgroups</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid15"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid111"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">At <</span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3 url"><a
href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?title=User:Dmose/Tb_Product_Notes">https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?title=User:Dmose/Tb_Product_Notes</a></span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">>, we've said that we're
targeting individual and SOHO (Small Office / Home Office)
users. We've also said that we'll be doing this by</span><span
class="author-g-sehws9rse8htilr5"> </span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">"focusing on conversations
that occur over mainstream and emerging communication channels.
These include email, web forums, social networks, and
microblogging services." <br>
</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid19"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid122"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">All of the interests in the
list above are not only our own interests as a development
community, they are also shared by our users when they're having
conversations over email. And those rough edges of handling
conversations over email are part of our mainstream users'
day-to-day experience of our product. </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid21"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid189"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">While it makes a </span><span
class="author-g-sehws9rse8htilr5">lot</span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3"> of sense for us as </span><span
class="author-g-sehws9rse8htilr5">the </span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">development community to enjoy
the benefits of the NNTP experience today, it is also acting as
a crutch: because we're not eating our own dogfood, it's
preventing us from having a deeper understanding of how those
problems feel to our users.</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid23"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid227"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">This in turn makes it much
harder for us to make the gut prioritization choices for
solutions to these issues both individually and as a group. And
when I say individually, what I'm trying to communicate is that
while some amount of feature work and fixes happens as a result
of driver-led prioritization, lots also depends on decisions
made by individual community members. In particular, it depends
on the decisions of individual developers, triagers, </span><span
class="author-g-sehws9rse8htilr5">bug filers, and </span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">designers about "what feels
like the next most important thing for me to spend my own time
on?". </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid25"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid278"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">So I'd like to be clear that
at this point I still feel that the decision to leave the NNTP
gateways off is the right one, though not an easy one. I
understand that this requires some work flow changes and, even
with those, it won't be entirely comfortable, and I'm
sympathetic to that. But it has the advantage of serving the
interests of _both_ us in the development community _and_ the
interests of our users, rather than serving the interests of the
development community while working against the interests of our
users. </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid27"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid330"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">It's not impossible that I c</span><span
class="author-g-sehws9rse8htilr5">ould</span><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3"> be convinced to change my
mind, but at this point, I feel like the bar is pretty high. I
have a decent understanding of the pain points, and for me to
change my mind, I'd have to get new information that made me
believe that creating those gateways really would serve the
overall goals of Thunderbird better. </span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid29"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid285"><span
class="author-g-llo7i64ephyvgeg3">Dan</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid32"><br>
</div>
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