A hierarchical to-reply list embedded in E-mail

There's a nice feature in most software unit testers: branch checking (in short: it's a hierarchical to-do list). I'll elaborate on what I mean. You need to check every path of execution of program branches (including nested ones). The program segments that contain paths that are yet unchecked are marked with a cross and are highlighted (usually with a color like red). After you are finished checking some paths of execution, those parts of the program source that are fully tested are given a tick and are highlighted (usually with different color).

We would need a feature like this in our E-mail clients! It would sure help some of the people I exchange mails with. You see, there exist peers who are notorious of forgetting to reply to parts of (my) messages - often the most informative parts! I usually follow this up by kindly asking them to give an answer or give the answer of not telling. They often reply that they simply forgot to answer, or that they had an impression of having answered that before (the antidote: create a blog! :->). They sometimes reply without further comment, as if it was only a glitch. Interestingly, I can't recall any response in the lines of an intentionally omitted answer. You see, I always try to be polite with my questions.

Comments

  1. Wouldn't it be much easier to cover only one topic or even just one question in one e-mail? This way if youd got any answer you could check it immediately. Today's handy email clients can handle several colors... :) Can't they? Or shouldn't I ask so many questions in one comment? ;)

    Ok, talking seriously it's not a bad idea, but changing *all* email clients is not an easy adventure. Changing only some of them obviously makes no sense. First there should a new RFC be announced and discussed. Then if the proposal is accepted you must wait for a long time for all the mail clients suppliers to the implement this extension. Buuuuuuuu :(

    But what about this scenario?
    1. When you are asking a question, you place a special text pattern just before it.
    2. When sending your mail an agent recognizes your questions and transforms them into unique hyperlinks. Each of these these links must point to properly generated webforms.
    3. Your partner gets your mail with the questions and the hyperlinks. These links point to the webforms dedicated to that question. So they can give the answer using the web form - Errr, I mean, just if they want to do so... :p
    4. The backend of this form then generates an automatic email in the name of your partner and sends this to you. And naturally your partner also gets a BCC of this letter.
    +1. If you want to create some kind of hierarchy in the question and answers, you can use e.g. header level numbers in your "special text pattern".
    +2. Or if you don't insist on the hierarchy of your questions the transforming agent can easily pick out interrogative sentences without any special text pattern. :)

    Tada! We are done. The personal private web forum is born. :D

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  2. Oh, I'm awfully sorry, looks like I didn't notice your comment! ;-( I do check regularly with my post listing but it might happen that this one warped to the second page...

    Surely sending each question in a separate letter does give a partial solution. Though this is where some form of file/message hierarchy (or tagging) could be of your service because of the orders of magnitude of increase in the number of messages. Colors are just a primitive set of tags. ;-) You can ask as many questions in your comments as you like, but there is no guarantee that anyone will answer! XD Now seriously, you could also post blog entries about your ideas and drop me a link! :-D

    I was thinking along the lines of a plugin similar to what you have proposed. Like most clients already color quotations, they could also color answered parts (somehow...).

    I like your linked webforms solution. If the form host only _stored_ the messages without any forwarding, and it also had an https interface then even those could enjoy some privacy who can't afford to install GnuPG! ;-> Your conclusion is also enlightening. People of the more complicated variant usually think in threads. Why not separate these threads explicitly? I sometimes find it easier (or at least more refreshing) to have an IM conversation using multiple threads with the same person! XD I (as most man do) find it very difficult to parallelize conversations with anything else (like work!), however this does not rule out other conversations! :-D A post on this topic is in the works.

    But remember we're all human. It may be best to simply ask again explicitly.

    Until there is consensus on how to solve this issue, be it an RFC or some other hack, I'm done with serious E-mail. There aren't many conversations I wouldn't be willing to share anyway, so why not publish it right away on my weblog? :-) Actually, I have been seriously considering this solution for many years now, but up until now, I was too lazy to start a blog! XD Thank you for your motivation, sir!

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