Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 390.
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    [1]    From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
           Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.389: removing Safelinks' links (59)

    [2]    From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
           Subject: reason for enmity against Safelinks et al (43)


--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2024-01-13 12:02:19+00:00
        From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.389: removing Safelinks' links

Willard, hello.

Replying to myself...

On 13 Jan 2024, at 7:12, Humanist wrote:

> I saw the 'safelinks' version in both cases, though readers who don't have
> 'safelinks' would have seen the real URL in the second case.  What _I_ see, in
> fact, includes my own email address in both links, because of the processing
> this goes through.  It is claimed that this will be edited out when this email
> goes to you, so who knows what others will see.

If we look at issue 37.389 on the web [1], then we can see the view of this
exchange from the outside, and we can see that the links are as they should be,
which makes your remark, in 37.386 [2], that

    rather than
    FOO
    Humanist gets
    <FOO>.

puzzlingly opaque to readers in different ways  (specifically, those whose
institutions use safelinks see both versions equally mangled, those whose
institutions don't, see neither mangled).

That is, the mangled version of the above remark that I saw, and that I included
in my reply was demangled when it left my institution.

What this means, Willard, is that there's probably nothing you need do, since

  * there's probably nothing you _can_ do to change this,
  * those whose institutions don't use safelinks see nothing amiss (and are
possibly rather perplexed by the conversation), and
  * those whose institutions do, see things amiss in the way they have probably
now come to expect (if not tolerate).

That is, this system would be assessed as Working As Designed, and the fact that
it is hugely irritating for users is a mere technical detail.



Dragging this back to a Humanist topic, there might be something to be said here
about email diplomatics.  Which, of the various versions in different people's
inboxes, is the real version of my email?  The version of my email in [1] is, in
a sense, a 'better' version of my email than the one the system bcc-ed to me,
and even, in a sense, more authentic than the version that appeared in the
mailer when I was writing it.

Best wishes,

Norman


[1] https://dhhumanist.org/volume/37/389/
[2] https://dhhumanist.org/volume/37/386/

--
Norman Gray  :  https://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2024-01-13 08:23:23+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: reason for enmity against Safelinks et al

Thanks to those who have replied regarding my query about how to remove
Safelinks and its thoughtless brethren and sistern (whether from ME "or
alternatively modelled after brethren", as the Wikipedia entry would
have it). This is to give reason to the enmity I share with Normal Gray
and doubtless a host of others.

The reason is simply this: that Humanist is meant to be READ. Remember
reading? Not nervously, twitchingly leaping from a spot in a
character-string to some other place without taking in and inwardly
digesting what someone has written in continuous prose meant to be
enjoyed as such. I find it remarkable--and here remark on--that so many
seem to have lost (I hope temporarily) essential skills of communication
in written language.

It is true that plain-text Humanist is in some respects, because of that
plainness, deprived, but for intelligent people is this not a small
challenge? Some here will remember the apocalyptic hypertext fever that
gripped so many of us. I now wonder if some part of the hunt for
literary allusions that gripped me as a doctoral student of Milton's
Paradise Lost wasn't related to that very fever. At one point, impressed
by the density of that literary work, I set myself a challenge to pin
down ALL the biblical and classical allusions in some 20 lines of
Paradise Lost. It took me a while before I realised that my attempt to
decode these lines was NOT the reverse of what the poet had done, not
the point at all. Those lines, the whole of the poem, was the result of
Milton having (to put the matter crudely) assimilated the Bible,
Greco-Roman literature and a great deal, if not all, of what was
available to him, then manifesting the lot, becoming the poet he was.

Take Raymond Carver's prose or Alice Munro's. Plain-text Humanist is not
at that level, of course, but when we settle down and engage in
'rational discourse' (let us call it), are we not going as best we can
in that direction?

Comments?

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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