[PLUG] Reply-to issue with the mailing list.

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Thursday, October 24, 2002, at 11:39 AM, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
> Um... could we maybe put a stop to the public AOLs?
>
> I appreciate Kevin's making this list. But, as he suggested, he's
> making the list, so you can email him privately. You know, rather
> than generating noise on the mailing list. :^>

This is not a particularly easy problem to resolve. It's a big user 
education issue.

One reason that people reply to the list is the fact that the list 
mailings are set so that both "reply" and "reply all" go to the entire 
list! I suspect that most people don't even realize this is happening 
to them.

I do know why this is...(I've been a postmaster and a ListOwner for far 
too many years). And I know that the topic is a serious religious war 
issue for which there is no "rational" solution, so I'm not trying to 
open that topic for discussion ...

But the end-user support side-effect remains. It is the unintended 
consequence of having the "Reply-to" point only back to the list:

	In order to reply to the individual sender instead of the entire list
	requires additional thought and effort -- one must manually address, or
	otherwise edit the outgoing message headers.

Personally, I prefer the LISTSERV(tm) setting which allows for replies 
to go both to the sender AND the entire list in the Reply-To. This at 
least, allows one to "edit out" the list, which is usually an "easier" 
action than looking up the desired address and cutting and pasting it 
into place. [I normally use RMAIL in emacs so I know that the 
"reply-to" is the only thing I'm going to get. But then I'm an odd 
duck.]

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group        --       http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug