[Clipart] this mailing list is configured incorrectly, likely resulting in a lot of off-list discussion

[Mike Traum]

I completely agree here.

It seems to me that by making the default (meaning just when you
click Reply) send to only the author, you end up supporting private
conversation. In general, a mailing list is supposed to foster a
community discussion.

Mike

--- Nathan Eady <eady at galion.lib.oh.us> wrote:

> Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> 
> > Setting the reply-to to the list ends up generating more mail to
> the
> > list 
> 
> Yes, which is the correct and desired thing in vanishingly close to
> 100% 
> of cases.
> 
> There *are* lists where the Reply-To should not be set, but they
> the 
> kinds of lists where replies to the list are often not wanted, such
> as 
> extremely high-volume lists (the Mandrake Cooker list comes to
> mind)
> or lists that allow/encourage posts from non-subscribed persons
> (which,
> spam being the issue that it is these days, is frankly rather
> insane).
> 
> > that can't be undone. If you send mail to one person, you can
> then
> > forward it to the list as well.
> 
> Only after you notice, a day or two later, that you neglected to
> change
> the To: field (something the user SHOULD NOT have to manually do
> for
> every single reply) and go digging back through your outbox to find
> it.
> That's not an efficient workflow.  Sometimes you don't notice at
> all,
> if you aren't specifically looking for replies to your message.  In
> that case, this becomes effectively a data-loss scenerio, because
> the
> message is sent apparently without error, but it is never received
> by
> the intended recipients.
> 
> At home, where I have a decent mail client, this is no problem; I
> just
> set the reply-address option on the folder for this list.  At work,
> where I am stuck using an inferior mail client, it is a
> *significant*
> problem.  I've been bitten by it a number of times now.
> 
>  > If you send it to the list when you mean
> > to just reply to the author, you can't unsend that.
> 
> Yeah, but how often do you intend to send an offlist reply?  0.01%
> of
> the time?  Less?  On those rare occasions, you're specifically
> thinking
> about that and so will easily remember to edit the To: field.  I'm
> on
> numerous lists that set the Reply-To:, and this has never been a
> problem
> on any of them.  Every person I have ever heard use this argument
> (and
> I have had this discussion dozens of times on dozens of lists) has
> also admitted that most of the lists they are on do not set the
> Reply-To, meaning that, in fact, they don't actually know whether
> it
> is a problem or not:  Those of us who are on numerous lists that
> set
> the Reply-To header (and have been on such lists for years) do know
> whether this is a problem: it is not.
> 
> > If Yahoo and Thunderbird's Reply-To-All don't include the list
> address,
> 
> Reply-To-All is an irrelevant red herring.  For one thing, it sends
> duplicate copies, which is horrible netiquette and has been
> deprecated
> since time out of mind; encouraging people to use it for every
> message
> is irresponsible at best.  For another, it is not the button the
> user
> normally hits to reply to messages, so it requires the user to take
> some special action for list messages; the default, the thing that
> happens when the user hits the regular button, is the Wrong Thing.
> _______________________________________________
> clipart mailing list
> clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/clipart
> 



		
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