Dragaera

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

Fri Nov 29 07:21:50 PST 2002

At 22:20 -0500 28.11.2002, Thomas Yan wrote:

 > 1. Have you accidentally sent a private reply instead of posting to
 >    the list?

No, but I've only posted a handful of times.

 > 2. Have you received an accidental private reply that was meant to go
 >    to the list?

No, but see above.

 > 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?

Definitely not.  This is what puzzles me: I'm on 5 or 6 lists like this one
(discussion-based lists), and with only one exception, they all have the
reply-to set to the individual poster, just like this list -- correctly, in
other words. :)  Do I just belong to unusual lists, or is this really not
the norm?  One list I've been on since 1993 has had it that way forever,
and all of the others have had that set since their inception.  Only one
list -- and the one I'd characterize as less technologically-savvy, that
was the offspring of a web board -- has the reply-to set to list, and we
must get at *least* three or four messages a week that were meant to be
private.  Some of those are nothing horrible, but there have been more than
a few flame wars that erupted because of something that should have been
kept private.

Because posting private email unintentionally seems like a far more serious
cause for embarrassment (and possible list turmoil) than the reverse, I've
always been in favor of the reply-to-poster setting.  Of course it doesn't
matter to me too much, since I rarely post and Eudora has an easy
'reply-to-all' and nickname function, but I still say it seems the more
logical choice.

 > 5. How do you feel about the Reply-To behavior of this list?
 >    Do you
 >    + love it
 >    + like it

Not strongly, but I am in favor of it.

- Nancy.