From: Daire Garvey (daire at domain wbtsystems.com)
Date: Wed 21 Apr 1999 - 12:04:51 IST
> Look, I'm leaving it the way it is. For a bunch of good reasons why, see:
>
> http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
* It violates the principle of minimal munging.
Well if you describe this 'principal' as in the article: "It says you should
not make any changes to an email header unless you know precisely what you
want to do, why you want to do it, and what it will affect." then we're not
doing this - because we know exactly what kind of functionality we want, why
we want it, and what it will effect.
* It provides no benefit to the user of a reasonable mailer.
* It limits a subscriber's freedom to choose how he or she will direct a
response.
* It actually reduces functionality for the user of a reasonable mailer.
* It removes important information, which can make it impossible to get back
to the message sender.
I have a very reasonable mailer, and to me, using group reply means MORE
work. Why? Simple - on any discussion list I'm on, the ratio of list-replies
to private-replies is about 90%-10%. We're not here to stand around talking
to each other privately - we're here for open discussion.
I want to read what people have to say, in particular I want to read replies
to questions other people have asked - and I feel this setting means that a
lot of this (to me) valuable traffic is being lost because this daft setting
discourages discussion because everyone is sending private replies.
Using group reply is no magical solution - do I really want the sender of
the message to receive TWO replies? One to him, and one to the list? No, so
I have to edit the damn reply line anyway. Since most of us (rightly) reply
to the list far more than we reply privately, then we're doing more of this
work than we have to.
Setting reply-to doesn't reduce functionality or freedom, nor does it make
it impossible to find the message sender. Currently, on the rare occasions
when I feel the need to reply off-list, I can reply easily, big deal. On all
the other occasions, though, I want to reply to the list, I have to do a
group-reply, and then edit the reply field to remove the sender so they
don't get two copies - that's silly.
* It penalizes the person with a reasonable mailer in order to coddle those
running brain-dead software.
This isn't an issue, as we all have modern mailers.
* It violates the principle of least work because complicates the procedure
for replying to messages.
If people replied privately as much as they replied to the list, this would
hold true, but list replies are far more common, so making THEM less complex
is the better choice.
* It violates the principle of least surprise because it changes the way a
mailer works.
To me, being on a mailing list means everyone sees my replies, and I see
everyone's replies, that's why I'm here. It's more surprising to realise
that the last 3 mails I've sent have gone to single people, and not the list
because this list behaves differently to every other one I'm on.
* It violates the principle of least damage, and it encourages a failure
mode
that can be extremely embarrassing -- or worse.
Hah, a moment ago he's talking about not coddling fools who have bad
mailers, now he's coddling fools who reply to mailing lists with personal
info by mistake. As most of us are familiar with Reply-to munging as the
default for mailing lists, I very much doubt this happens at all often. In
Vin's case, he simply sent a mail to completely the wrong mailing list - a
different issue.
* Your subscribers don't want you to do it. Or, at least the ones who have
bothered to read the docs for their mailer don't want you to do it.
Yes we do, we know our mailers, and we still want this feature, because we
list-reply more often than we reply privately, and we believe this setting
is reducing valuable list traffic.
Regards,
Daire.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Thu 06 Feb 2003 - 13:04:08 GMT