Dragaera

Straw Poll about "Reply-to" (was: Damiano's Lute)

Thu Nov 28 21:36:57 PST 2002

> Well, it won't necessarily convince anyone, but let's have a 
> little poll:
> 
> 1. Have you accidentally sent a private reply instead of posting to
>    the list?

yes 

> 1'. Have you accidentally posted to the list instead of sending a
>     private reply?

No, although I have done this on lists that set the reply-to to the list
rather than the author
 
> 2. Have you received an accidental private reply that was meant to go
>    to the list?

Yes, altough less frequently than intentional private replies.

> 3. When you get a message that was sent to you instead of the list, do
>    you feel obliged to query the sender to ask him or her if it was
>    meant to private instead of to the list?

No.  Often I can tell from context that the message is indeed for me.

> 4. Has the Reply-To behavior of this list caused you confusion when
>    posting to other mailing lists, perhaps even causing you to
>    accidentally send a private e-mail instead of posting or vice
>    versa?

Actually the reverse.  Having been a longtime subscriber to the
continuing time list and the CT-Forum off-topic offshoot list, it took
me a couple weeks to get really comfortable with it.  At this point I
post regularly to both lists, and while my principal mail clients (MS
Outlook 2000/2002) don't allow me to setup rules for how to override the
list reply-to settings as other subscribers have mentioned, I manage
fine with reply for private replies and reply to all, delete author's
address for public replies.  One nice feature with the current behavior
here, is I don't have to go digging for the author's address when I do
want to make a private reply.  

> 5. How do you feel about the Reply-To behavior of this list?
>    Do you
>    + like it
I'm somewhere in between these two
>    + don't much care

Casey