Replying to list messages

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:42:13 -0800, Paul McNett wrote:

> Ben Finney wrote:
>> Paul McNett <p at ulmcnett.com> writes:
>>> But arguing about this here isn't going to change anything: opinions
>>> differ just like tabs/spaces and bottom-post/top-post.
>> 
>> In cases like this, one side can simply be wrong :-)
>> 
>> Best of luck getting your programs behaving as you want them to!
> 
> BTW, I agree with you that in an ideal, pure world mailing lists
> wouldn't munge the reply-to field, but when 80% of the people use email
> clients that don't support reply-list, the practical thing to do as a
> list admin that wants to avoid having to explain over and over again
> that "your client software is broken" is to simply swallow some pride
> and munge the reply-to. Now, 99% of the users are happy, and the
> remaining 1% are elite enough to understand how to get around any
> problems this caused.

The only problem this leads to is people who hit send without checking 
where they are sending to are likely to be embarrassed when they send 
personal posts to the entire mailing list.

As far as I'm concerned, hitting send without looking to see who you are 
sending to is akin to turning into a busy road without looking to see if 
there are any cars coming: any accident that happens is YOUR fault, not 
the fault of the road, car, mail client or mailing list.

It boggles my brain that [insert sweeping generalisation here] the people 
who are most vehement about blaming the mailing list software are usually 
also the least understanding when (l)users click "OK" to dialogs without 
reading what the dialog says first.



-- 
Steven