Reply to whom?

[Ben Finney]

Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, Feb 3, 2016, at 16:50, Ben Finney wrote:
> > (You will also have a “reply to all” command. That's almost never
> > appropriate in a forum like this.)
>
> Why not? People reply all to messages I write all the time, and I find
> it somewhat useful since it separates replies to things I have said
> from discussions I'm not part of.

That's nice for you that it coincides with what you find useful. For
those who don't want messages to the forum duplicated in their inbox,
the behaviour is obnoxious.

In other words: Using “reply to all” on a forum like this is
inappropriate because you can't know what every participant wants, so
your set of recipients should be conservative and err on the side of not
sending a duplicate message to people who didn't ask for it.

-- 
 \        “Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas |
  `\     are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” |
_o__)                                                    —Howard Aiken |
Ben Finney