Hi, after talking to Dale I have decided to post this suggestion to the CR mailing list.
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Dear CR members,
please remember that this is an "archived" mailing list. What you write is recorded for posterity. As a result, here are some suggestions to improve archive quality :
============== From: somebody@somewhere.com Subject: CR Members, Hey Look at this ?!?!
Can you believe this ??
http://www.tinyurl.com/
In the big cosmic email scheme of things, this is not useful to posterity. Both the subject and the body of the message contain no permanent information. First, the TinyURL service may not be around forever. So there is no guarantee that the link will work for even one day. Second, to stay tiny, they _must_ eventually recycle tiny urls (which are HTTP referral responses). I calculate there are less than 1.5M tiny url's available, and if the site takes off they could be wrapping every 30 days or less. So a better message would be this:
============== From: somebody@somewhere.com Subject: CR Members, Hey Look at this ?!?!
Can you believe this ??
http://www.tinyurl.com/
Now, there are times when i don't have a browser sitting open and in fact URL's wrap and get munged are often painful to follow. So I will not follow an URL with no incentive to do so. If I follow the URL and its not impressive then I will have very bad impression of you forever more. Many people will not follow the URL or will follow it and be disappointed. So this posting is really irritating the CR list.
What's worse, four months from now nobody will ever know what you were talking about since EBAY items last only 3 months. So a better message might be :
============== From: somebody@somewhere.com Subject: Look at the price on this Red Super Mondia !!!
It has "Buy It Now" for only $12.95, seller pays shipping !!!
http://www.tinyurl.com/
This is an excellent CR ebay referral message. People have enough info to get the precisely right viewership. Uninterested people can skip this URL. Twenty years from now everyone will know what you were talking about.
Thanx for listening,
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA