[Mailman-Users] Reply to list

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:27 PM -0600 2004/02/05, Paul H Byerly wrote:

>  Times have changed - lists are not long used only by folks who
>  know how to build a computer from scratch and program it themselves.

	Indeed, therein lies the problem.  The kinds of silly problems 
that lead to the original page were things that happened years ago, 
back when most people had some sort of clue as to what they were 
doing.  The situation has only gotten worse since then, not better.

>  A lot of user have been conditioned to hit "reply" without thinking.

	Without thinking.  That's the real problem.

>  Additionally, a lot of folks don't want a private copy plus one to
>  the list - and done as the author suggests there is no quick and
>  easy way to send to the list only.

	Related to what you reference below, if you want to reply to just 
the list, all you have to do is hit "reply-all", and then delete the 
addresses you don't want.  That's even simpler than "cut-n-paste", 
because there's no "paste" part to that operation.

	Once information is destroyed, it is virtually impossible to 
recover.  At best, it takes a lot more effort.  It's a lot easier to 
ask someone to add the name of the mailing list as an additional 
recipient, if they should mistakenly send their reply privately. 
However, once information has been made public, it's impossible to 
make it private again.

>                                      Then there was this:
>
>  "Look at the original message header, write down the sender's
>  email address, hit the "r" key, call up the header editing menu,
>  erase the current To: value, and type in the sender's full email
>  address.  And pray the correct address wasn't wiped out when the
>  Reply-To was munged."
>
>       Has this fellow never heard of cut and paste?

	This fellow has experience with software that doesn't work the 
way you think.  You'd be surprised how many people have software you 
didn't know about, or that works differently than you think.

>                                                      I've never
>  had a problem adding the author as a cc, or sending to the author
>  rather than the list.  Yes it's a bit more work, but as it's the
>  exception rather than the rule for me it's not a problem.

	That's adding information.  That's not trying to re-create 
information that has been destroyed by the mailing list.

>       Bottom line, I can understand that there was a time when
>  reply to author made sense for a lot of lists, but I don't think
>  that is the case anymore.

	I disagree.  I've been doing this sort of stuff for fifteen 
years, and I've been using e-mail and the Internet for twenty.

	IMO, this sort of thing is needed now, more than ever.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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