[H-GEN] Morphing into reply-to holy war

[Sandra Milne]

Andrae Muys wrote:

> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
> 
> Greg Black wrote:
> 
>>
>> Hopefully, the list will stay as it is.  For the record, I'm on
>> hundreds of lists and very few of them set the reply-to header
>> and I'm always pleased to see lists drop that damaging feature.
>>
> 
> On this issue I'm afraid I have to disagree.  Going though my mail 
> archives (and ignoring humbug for the moment) I have a ratio of 6:16 
> lists using reply-to : not.  I have ignored announce lists, as I am 
> unaware of any argument to support setting a reply-to for such lists.
> 
> In support of reply-to I consider the following:
> 
> I consider it rude to send private duplicates when replying to list.
> It is irritating to have to be forced to 'default' to editing headers to 
> obtain 'correct' behaviour.

It doubles the amount of time taken to send a quick reply to a list. Now 
I know there's an argument for 'if people really want it to go to the 
list then they have to make sure it does' blah blah blah.... Of the 6 
lists I'm on (including this one) this is the only list that doesn't 
have a reply-to set. And no, they're not all yahoo groups.

> It encourages people taking discussion off list, I consider any list 
> that dosn't set reply-to to be making an implicit preference for 
> off-line discussions.

It would not surprise me to find that this is a large factor in the lack 
of posts to the list since mailman was implemented. It was implemented 
before most folks would have taken their Christmas break, but that would 
also account for less traffic.

> It often leads to awkward situations with help contributions/requests 
> being sent privately when the responder desires them public.

Indeed. I've sent a few replies privately without realising, and then 
thought "oh wait, what if other people might have enjoyed seeing that too".

> These last two I consider serious flaws with the no-reply-to school of 
> thought, I have yet to find an even faintly credible attempt to counter 
> to them.

Credible or not, I find that there are always two sides and two good 
arguments. I'm willing to still participate on the list in its current 
form, however due to the 'fiddliness' of replying, I'll probably limit 
my contributions. This may be the desired behaviour - people taking a 
few minutes more to think whether it should really go to the list or 
not. Desired behaviour or not, it feels like going back to 1995.

I doubt I shall be able to retrain myself as all my other lists use the 
old HUMBUG General behaviour. I'll now drop this line of comment after 
saying "It just feels icky".

Sandra.
-- 
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