In my case, ALL the other lists I belong to automatically reply back to
the group, I have occasion to reply to THIS group so infrequently that I
always forget to change the headers (and sometime Netscape changes them
back!)
Perhaps a line could be added to the SIG as a reminder?
John Kopf
Edward Reid wrote:
>
> At 12:11 AM -0500 3/2/02, Steve Summit wrote:
> >See also http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html for a
> >comprehensive explanation of why munging Reply-To to point to the
> >entire list would be Wrong.
>
> I hope this doesn't become a long discussion here, and I have no
> interest in changing the configuration of faq-maintainers. (However,
> Steve will note that he got two or possibly three copies of this reply
> because I did a "reply to group" and didn't fix the headers manually.
> Hi, Steve.) But since this has been mentioned, I think it needs a
> response.
>
> Though the author of that page makes some good points, he omits some
> important ones. He briefly mentions that some people think making
> replies go preferentially to the list is good for helping to build
> traffic, but then simply declares this to be wrong with no reasons
> given, and certainly no understanding shown of the human dynamics of
> discussion groups.
>
> His reasoning sticks too close to the technical points and doesn't look
> at issues of actual human behavior.
>
> Building critical mass for discussions *is* important. Many people have
> tried to set up discussion groups without understanding this issue,
> have subdivided the discussions so that none reach critical mass, and
> seen their groups die. Email headers have no way to indicate to the end
> user (much less to the user's software) a preference for increasing or
> minimizing list traffic. Yet it makes a lot of difference to the
> atmosphere of the list, and saying this doesn't matter is simply wrong.
>
> People who use mailers a lot generally get into "reply" mode. Most do
> *not* think at the moment of a reply whether they are replying to
> individual email or a list, and whether they want to reply to one or
> all. As pointed out, this causes problems. But it also means that the
> preferred response method for a given environment should be the
> default. In email, the only way to do this is with the Reply-To.
>
> These are human factors, not technical issues, and they do matter.
>
> The basic problem is that email isn't set up for group discussions, and
> discussion lists are a big kludge built on top of email. At the very
> least, to make email reasonable for group discussions, messages should
> have headers Reply-To-Originator, Reply-To-Group, and Reply-Preference.
> But mailing lists don't have those, and mailers don't support them. In
> short, arguing about how the Reply-To should be handled is a bit like
> arguing about whether two plus two is seven or nine.
>
> There *is* a better way. It's called ... get this, folks ...
> newsgroups! Now it's true that newsgroups don't support
> Reply-Preference. But they do make Follow Up distinct from Reply (at
> least with non-broken newsreaders), which helps a lot. Reply (aka Reply
> to Originator) uses the Reply-To address, and Follow Up (aka Reply to
> Group) uses the Newsgroups or Followup-To address. Newsreaders make the
> environment distinct from email. Many mailers don't even support
> threads, which almost all newsreaders do. And now that many newsreaders
> support multiple news servers, it's easy for most people to subscribe
> to a newsgroup that's only carried on a private server. I'm currently
> subscribed to newsgroups on three private servers as well as on a
> Usenet news server, and at times in the past have subscribed on two
> other servers.
>
> So anyone who really cares about this issue should be setting up
> discussions for access via NNTP, rather than as mailing lists.
>
> Now to repeat, I see no reason to change faq-maintainers. We get enough
> discussion of any issue that comes up. We are basically here to
> exchange information and solve problems, not to build a community, so
> it doesn't matter if the list goes silent for weeks at a time. Let it
> be. But in the general case, I don't think it's as one-sided as that
> web page makes it out to be.
>
> Edward Reid
>
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