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Until now, the News-by-Mail gateway to the lugnet newsgroups has only
supported instantaneous message delivery: one e-mail message sent to you
for each article appearing in your newsgroups.
I am pleased to announce that the gateway now supports digests: multiple
messages rolled into one, sent to you at regular intervals. Message
digests are a trade-off: you give up a bit of immediacy in exchange for
fewer interruptions and less clutter in your e-mail inbox.
If digests sound interesting to you, please take a moment to review the
interface changes at the News-by-Mail Settings page:
http://www.lugnet.com/news/mail/
The first interface change is a new Options section which looks like this:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Options
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Please Subscribe me to the groups highlighted, and send me any new messages
in these groups...
as Regular Messages: as Digests, at Intervals:
________________________ _______________________________________________
o As soon as they appear o Hourly o Every 4 hours o Twice daily
o Every 2 hours o Every 6 hours o Once Daily
o Every 3 hours o Every 8 hours o Once Weekly
o Please Unsubscribe me from the groups highlighted.
.------------------------. .--------------.
| Update Subscriptions | or | Reset Form |
`------------------------' `--------------'
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To subscribe to groups in digest form, highlight the names of your groups,
then select a subscription interval from the Options area, and then click
Update Subscriptions. You can subscribe to any number of groups at once,
and you can subscribe to different groups in different ways. You can also
change the delivery options for your groups whenever you like.
The second interface change is in the way your subscriptions are listed. If
you are subscribed to groups the regular way (non-digest), then the names
of your groups appear as they always have. If you are subscribed to groups
as digests, then the names of the groups appear followed by a number and a
letter in parentheses, for example:
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Subscriptions for
your@address-here.com
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You are currently subscribed to 17 groups via e-mail:
10 Worldwide Groups: 7 Local Groups:
.---------------------------------.-. .-----------------------.-.
| lugnet.announce |^| | lugnet.loc.us |^|
| lugnet.announce.lsahs | | | lugnet.loc.us.co.den | |
| lugnet.build (3H) | | | lugnet.loc.us.ma.bos | |
| lugnet.cad.dev (3H) | | | lugnet.loc.us.mi.det | |
| lugnet.market.auction (D) | | | lugnet.loc.us.mi.fli | |
| lugnet.reviews (W) | | | lugnet.loc.us.mi.grr | |
| lugnet.robotics (3H) | | | lugnet.loc.us.mi.lan |v|
| lugnet.robotics.rcx.legos (½D) | | `-----------------------'-'
| lugnet.robotics.rcx.nqc (½D) | |
| lugnet.trains (6H) |v|
`---------------------------------'-'
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lugnet.build (3H) would mean that you are subscribed to receive the building
group in digest form at most every 3 hours. lugnet.robotics.rcx.legos (½D)
would mean that you are subscribed to receive the MindStorms RCX/legOS group
in digest form at most twice daily. And lugnet.reviews (W) would mean that
you are subscribed to receive the reviews group in digest form at most once
weekly.
Here is a summary of the digest-interval abbreviations:
(H) - 1 Hour
(2H) - 2 Hours
(3H) - 3 Hours
(4H) - 4 Hours
(6H) - 6 Hours
(8H) - 8 Hours
(½D) - 1/2 Day
(D) - 1 Day
(W) - 1 Week
As you can see, this is simply a convenient algebraic time notation, with
H standing for 1 hour, D standing for 1 day, and W standing for 1 week.
By the way, all of the digest intervals are "anchored" to a certain time of
the day chosen to minimize server load and hopefully to maximize usefulness.
That time is 5:00 am EST for daily messages and 5:00 am EST early Monday
mornings for weekly messages. All other intervals are synchronized with
these "anchor" times.
For example, digests marked as (½D) are mailed out at 5:00 am and 5:00 pm
EST, and digests marked as (4H) are mailed out at 5:00 am, 9:00 am, 1:00 pm,
5:00 pm, 9:00 pm, and 1:00 am EST.
Note that since everyone can choose separate time intervals and can change
these intervals on a whim, the "last article sent" information for groups
is tracked separately for each person. Using an anchor time maximizes
opportunities for the server to send out single, identical digest messages
to multiple recipients, as the majority of subscribers over time will tend
to be in sync with one another.
It is recommended that you subscribe to time-sensitive groups (such as
lugnet.announce.lsahs for LEGO Shop-At-Home Service phone specials) only as
regular subscriptions and *not* as digests. To understand why, consider what
would happen if you were subscribed to lugnet.announce.lsahs as a weekly
digest: Since weekly digests are mailed out at 5:00 am EST early Monday
mornings, and the Monday S@H phone specials are not known until a few hours
later, you wouldn't receive the information until the following Monday, almost
a whole week late. Note that even if the anchor time for weekly messages were
Tuesday morning instead of Monday morning, you would still miss out in cases
where Monday was a holiday and phone specials were delayed until Tuesday.
The easy rule to remember is this: Digests are for relatively moderate to
high-traffic groups since they compress multiple messages into a single one.
Finally, each digest message you receive begins with a table of contents. If
you are curious to know what these look like, here is an example summarizing
lugnet.robotics during a 4-hour period last week Wednesday evening:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This digest contains 17 news articles:
# Subject Posted by
==== =============================================== =====================
3819 Droid development kit picture at my web page! Huw Millington
3820 > Droid development kit picture at my web pa... Huw Millington
3821 > Droid development kit picture at my web pa... David Colomer
3822 > Droid development kit picture at my web pa... Luis Villa
3823 >>> RCX IR Messages & Universal Remotes Brandon Yates
3824 Can C See? Brandon Yates
3825 > Droid development kit picture at my web pa... Sean R Wells
3826 >> Droid development kit picture at my web p... David Colomer
3827 >> Motor power? Hao-yang Wang
3828 > Droid development kit picture at my web pa... Huw Millington
3829 >> Droid development kit picture at my web p... Alan Shutko
3830 Motor power? B van Dam
3831 mindstorms in stock again at eToys Aaron Wright
3832 links to pictures of Star Wars Mindstorms sets Dwayne Jacques Fon...
3833 > links to pictures of Star Wars Mindstorms ... Robert Farver
3834 >>> Droid development kit picture at my web ... Jesse Long
3835 > links to pictures of Star Wars Mindstorms ... Russell Nelson
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The > characters in the Subject field reflect an article's depth in its
thread tree. The more >'s, the deeper in the tree the article resides.
Absence of a > implies that the article is the first in a new thread.
Well, that's about all there is to it. The News-by-Mail settings page is
still pretty straightforward; it's just giving you a bit more flexibility now.
--Todd
p.s. Your existing News-by-Mail subscriptions, if you have any, are
preserved as-is and are still set to regular (non-digest) mode. If you
are happy this way, or you don't care for digests, then you don't need to
change any settings.
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Digests
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| On Mon, 22 Feb 1999 09:30:51 GMT, lehman@javanet.com (Todd Lehman) wrote: [Really excellent write-up snipped] (...) Are the >'s a simple count of depth, or are they (more like) logarithmic? Cool feature, either way. Steve (25 years ago, 22-Feb-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: Digests
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| (...) Nice work! :-) I'd rather see the headers sorted by title instead of time. That would put all the "Droid development kit" messages next to each other. Another nice thing was if you could (optionally) send HTML mail, and instead of a simple (...) (25 years ago, 22-Feb-99, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Digests
|
| Todd Lehman wrote in message ... (...) Is there any chance of digests by volume or count? I'm on a few digests elsewhere that run on a "when the moderator thinks there's enough for a digest" basis. Being able to say "when there are more than 1000 (...) (25 years ago, 24-Feb-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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