[ODE] Suggestion for List admin

[whitt013]

Well, I'll second that.  I'm on a mailing list at college that's designed to 
hook co-ops up who are working on opposite terms and need someone to sublease 
their apartment for a few months, buy their football tickets, and that kind of 
stuff.  For those kind of lists, where most replies would involve something 
the whole list doesn't really care about, the reply should be set to the 
sender and not the list.

On the other hand, the ODE mailing list is designed as a discussion list, and 
most of the replies should go to the list.  Even if most of the people on the 
list don't care about this particular reply, the archives + google make an 
invaluable reference for future work.  So it is my opinion that for this list, 
replies should be set to automatically be sent to the list.

Another reason why replies should go to the list:  We're all developers.  
"Netiquette" states that replies should automatically go to the sender and not 
the list because there are a good portion of lists like the first one I 
mentioned, and the average web user may not know that it is polite or even how 
to change the To line so it will go back to the sender, or even where to 
locate the sender's address.  As programmers, I would assume we are all 
well-versed in the workings and social aspects of the internet, so leaving it 
up to the user the task of discerning which emails should go to the list and 
which should go to the sender is not as big of a deal.  So the default 
reply-to address is now more a matter of convenience than of trying to force 
the end users to Do The Right Thing.  And since a good majority of the 
correspondence on this list is useful information for the list as a whole, it 
would be more convenient for the reply-to address to be to the list.

Just my two cents,
David

>===== Original Message From "Michal Bacik" <michal@lonelycatgames.com> =====
>Hey, I'm on DirectX mailing list, which works fine when I hit Reply button -
>no accidental messages in inbox, no lost replies, no receiving of duplicates
>if someone who use 'Reply to all' on your post.
>
>No problem, it was just a suggestion.
>
>- mb
>
>
>> It is apparently bad form to do this - not *exactly* sure why.  Anyway, it
>> is recommended against.  Russ has decided against it.
>>
>>  - a
>>
>> On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Michal Bacik wrote:
>>
>> > When I hit "Reply" button in my e-mail program on any message
>> in the list,
>> > it fills in address of sender, not the address of the list.
>> >
>> > This way, people accidentally reply to individuals, not to the list, and
>> > message is sent to wrong recipient - never appears in the list.
>> >
>> > Could this be fixed so that people don't make the same mistake again and
>> > again...?
>> >
>> > - michal
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > ODE mailing list
>> > ODE@q12.org
>> > http://q12.org/mailman/listinfo/ode
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
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