[Tutor] Reply All Dilemma of This List

[Brian Mathis]

You've stepped on a religious-war landmine.  You can read all about
why this is bad here:
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html ("Reply-To" Munging
Considered Harmful)
and why it's good here:
http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml (Reply-To Munging
Considered Useful)

This war has been raging since the dawn of mailing lists, and you're
not likely to get a resolution now either.


To me, the context of a mailing list warrants the use of Reply-All to
the list, since a mailing list is typically meant to be a group
discussion.  In this configuration, it takes extra effort to reply
privately, which is exactly the sort of thing you'd want to promote in
a group discussion.


On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Wayne Watson
<sierra_mtnview at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I belong to many, many forums, Yahoo Groups, (Usenet) newsgroups, and mail
> lists. Probably 100 or more. I think it's fair to say that none of them but
> this one has an implicit "Reply All". For newsgroups and mail lists, I just
> press my Mozilla Seamonkey mailer Reply button and the resulting message is
> ready to be seen by everyone, a single address. Here a Reply goes only to
> the poster, none to Tutor. Elsewhere, for e-mail-like posts, if I really
> want to make a special effort to single out the poster too, "Reply All"
> works to additionally get it directly to them (actually they'd get two
> messages directly) and the entire list.  For YGs and forums, the  "Reply
> All" is implicit in a response.
>
> Since this group, in my world, is unique in these matters, I'll just offer
> the following header for a mail list I belong to, the ASTC, for someone's
> consideration. I suppose that someone might be whoever created this mail
> list. It' definitely different than used here, and no one uses "Reply All"
> to my knowledge.
>
> Maybe they can figure out if it has applicability here.
> --
>
>            Wayne Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
>
>              (121.01 Deg. W, 39.26 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
>
>
> The Richard Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm:
>   (1) write down the problem;
>   (2) think very hard;
>   (3) write down the answer.
>
>                     Web Page: <www.speckledwithstars.net/>
>
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