Reply to author, reply to list, reply to all

[Ben Finney]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:

> Personally, what I do (which I'm doing with this post) is to use
> Gmail's "reply-all" feature, and then manually delete the individual
> addresses.

That is testimony in support of the position that Google Mail is a
poorly-designed interface for discussion forums such as mailing lists.

Google Mail, like any other mail client, has full access to all the
technical information (specified in RFC 3696) needed to implement a
correct “reply to list” behaviour.

Users shouldn't need to do anything tediously manual like you describe,
they should be presented with an obvious “reply to the same place”
function, as implemented in many mail clients for over a decade.

That Google Mail continues to fail in this regard is something its users
need to apply pressure to fix, or choose better mail clients until it
improves.

-- 
 \      “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a |
  `\        finite world is either a madman or an economist.” —Kenneth |
_o__)                                                         Boulding |
Ben Finney