(OT) Curtesy CC's (Whitelist/verification spam filters

[David Mertz, Ph.D.]

Paul> Generally if I ask something on Usenet, I'll watch the newsgroup
Paul> for replies and most people will in fact reply on Usenet.  It bugs
Paul> me when I get emailed replies unless there's a really specific
Paul> reason to reply by email (e.g. the email contains private info).

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote previously:
|I find it a courtesy for people to cc me on their replies as well as post to
|the list.  Usenet and mail server delays being what they are, I appreciate
|seeing the author's reply as early as possible...

I think I have a somewhat different attitude toward email responding to
a Usenet post than do either Paul of Skip.

Unlike Paul, I am very happy to receive email comments stemming from
something I wrote on Usenet.  That's another reason I don't mangle my
address...  I've been thrown off by not noticing a mangling enough times
to find it annoying when I have useful information for posters.

But unlike Skip, I don't particularly want to be CC'd on a message also
sent to the newsgroup.  I read and follow the newsgroups I post
to--especially the threads I contribute to.  More often than not, when I
get something in my mailbox, my feeble mind assumes that it was
something meant for me personally rather than part of the discussion per
se.  Half the time, I write back a personal message, and only afterwards
notice it was public, then have to decide if my own response merits
publication.  I'm a simple minded fellow, I admit.

I will often email someone who made a Usenet comment--I feel like their
contribution invites that (but I won't to Paul, now that I know better).
But only if I have something to say that I feel is relevant only to
them, rather than to the group as a whole.  Sometimes it is just to
compliment or query some comment they made.  Sometimes because I'd like
to initiate some side correspondence or collaboration.  Stuff like that.

Yours, David...

--
Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food from the bellies of
the hungry; books from the hands of the uneducated; technology from the
underdeveloped; and putting advocates of freedom in prisons.  Intellectual
property is to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.