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List:       linux-arm
Subject:    Re: (no subject)
From:       Erik Mouw <J.A.K.Mouw () ITS ! TUDelft ! NL>
Date:       2000-10-18 21:11:19
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On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 03:07:15PM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux Admin wrote:
> 3. Can anyone answer why mailman appears to be conceptually harder
>    for people to use than majordomo?  (Thus far, statistical information
>    indicates that there were less subscription/unsubscription errors
>    with majordomo).

I think it's because of the way the human brain works.

The human brain doesn't read every character in a word, instead it uses
the first characters of a word as a pattern and guesses the rest of the
word. This really speeds up reading, as you have experienced at school:
at first you read every character, but the more you read, the faster it
goes, and you start reading words at a time.

Of course, this guessing doesn't always work, but fortunately there is
enough context in normal language to correct the error and keep the
reading speed high. This also explains why you have to read new words
very carefully: your brain doesn't recognise the pattern and there
isn't enough context, so you have to read it carefully and learn the
pattern.

Back to the original problem: 

The majordomo way of subscribtion is to send a message to
majordomo@foo.bar. The list name to which you want to subscribe to is
different from the word "majordomo", so the mailing list address is
also different ("gnu@foo.bar", for example). 

Now the mailman way: the mailing list address is still "gnu@foo.bar",
but the subscription address is only slightly different:
"gnu-request@foo.bar". Now those two addresses still look quite
different, but given the way the human brain works,
linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk doesn't look too different from
linux-arm-kernel-request@lists.arm.linux.org.uk, and that might explain
why you see so many subscription errors.


Erik
[who subscribed back in the majordomo days]

-- 
J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems,
Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031,  2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-15-2783635  Fax: +31-15-2781843  Email: J.A.K.Mouw@its.tudelft.nl
WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/

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