Typing help brings up a screen that says type help()

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 8:40 AM, Joel Goldstick
<joel.goldstick at gmail.com> wrote:
> On this list I use reply all (using gmail) because reply takes the
> first recipient, which is the poster.  I am on another list where this
> isn't true.

Yes, and I've been on a few lists that have gone through the
discussion of why it should be one way or the other way.

The biggest problem is that Gmail doesn't have a "reply to list"
option to select as the default. (Nor do a number of other mail
clients; I'm not knocking Gmail specifically here, but it's what
several of us use, so it's the example I'm discussing.) In the absence
of such, there are basically four possibilities:

1) The list can be set to send replies to the list
1a) You might want to send to the list
1b) You might want to send a private message
2) The list can be set to send replies to the original poster
2a) As above
2b) As above
3) The list can also be set to send replies somewhere else, but that's
not germane to this discussion.

In case 1a, it's easy. Everything happens as it should. In case 2b,
it's also easy. You hit reply, it goes to the original poster, like
you want. So how do we handle the cross cases?

Case 2a is what python-list and Savoynet are set to. You want to reply
to the list? Hit Reply-All and then remove the original poster, or hit
Reply and change the destination. (That's a great option if you have
only one list. It's a terrible option if you have as many lists as I
have, because you'll change the destination wrongly.)

Case 1b is how I set up the Gilbert & Sullivan Society Committee
mailing list. It's meant primarily to be for discussions amongst a
small group (the committee consists of maybe a dozen people), and most
of them are not particularly technically adept (the G&S Society is an
artistic society (we perform light opera/operetta), so most of the
people who run it are artistic people, although we have for example a
treasurer who's an accountant); sending replies to the list makes the
most sense, and keeps the discussion where it needs to be. But how do
you go about sending a private reply? It's unusual on the committee
list, but it does happen; and you have to hit Reply or Reply-All, then
delete the list's name and manually copy and paste (or retype!) the
sender's address. This is VERY error-prone. It's really easy to
accidentally tell the list what was supposed to be private. The bigger
the list, the more common private replies will tend to be.

I would advise huge lists of unrelated people (python-list, Savoynet,
any general interest group) to have replies go to the poster, and
small lists of closely related people can consider having replies to
the list by default. But of course, there'll be exceptions either way.

ChrisA