Mark A Mandel writes:
>My fault, actually, because I didn't hit "reply to all" and had to
>forward to the list. Some other lists I'm on have a "Reply-to:" in the
>header, and I'm used to that.
Actually, this is a pretty good example of why genralizing a language
is bad -- by adding a "reply to: list" field, lists tend to blur the
semantic distinction between "reply to the whole list" and "reply to
just the person who sent this", thus making it harder, in general, to
say "no, I want to send to just this person", or alternatively "no, I
want to send to the whole list" in contexts where that isn't treated
as the default. [1]
[1] Which isn't to open that topic, since there are good
arguments on both sides, the ones on the other one than mine generally
being that there isn't a decent way to stop names from piling up on
both sides without user trimming otherwise; a failing in the
protocol and the way the software has grown...and paradoxically, since
I've made some modifications to ignore reply-tos on replies, but not
on followups for lists, I actually find lists with reply-to set
more convenient -because- it means that (for me) when I hit "r" it
goes only to the user, and when I hit "f" it goes (only) to the
list [and anyone CCed).
--
Joshua Kronengold (mneme at io.com) "I've been teaching |\ _,,,--,,_ ,)
--^--him...to live, to breathe, to walk, to sample the /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;'
/\\joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\
/-\\\I'm sorry if I kept him out too late"--Vlad Taltos '---''(_/--' (_/-'