Mark A Mandel writes:
>On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Joshua Kronengold wrote:
>#Agreed -- it's much worse to accidentally send a private message
>#instead of a public one than to accidentally send a public one instead
>#of a private one.
>Unless that accidentally-"published" message has personal, confidential,
>or embarrassing contents.
That was actually inverted -- the potential disaster is clearly far
worse from accidentally sending to more people rather than fewer.
(oops).
>(You can tell I'm saying this from my devotion
>to truth rather than from partisan purpose because I favor making
>"reply-to-all" the default on discussion lists, including this one.)
It is the default on this list. If you "reply to list", it will go to
all. I don't think there are many mailers that have "reply to
default"; they all have "reply to original sender" or "reply to all"
(and occasionally funky other answers).
I'll agree that you want to make "reply-to-list" the only option,
though. :)
>#But what are 'yall using the "reply" (rather than "reply to all")
>#thing on -any- list? "reply to all" does the right thing on both this
>#kind of list and on "reply-to" lists.
>Well, for some of us it's not equally easy. Pine has R for reply, and
>then it asks you "reply to all?" Or maybe it first asks you "include
>original message?" and then "reply to all?" If you're in a hurry...
Yes, pine is a bane to mankind, and shouldn't be used for more than a
week or so (and shouldn't be the default) -- it can be configured
semi-reasonably with a lot of work...but its defaults are Just Plain
Wrong.
>#Certainly not. Instead, the bad behavior of other lists has caused me
>#to spend some time learning lisp code and having to code around them
>#to make them Do the Right Thing.
>Ah, then the nifty facilitating workaround you mention above is
>definitely Not Available to some of us. Most of us?
Possibly, which is Yet Another Reason that lists shouldn't munge
reply-to. The thing is, if the "list-post" thing that this list
implements becomes sufficiently ubiquitous, it most mailing list
programs -should- evolve to handling this correctly, making the point
moot aside from "I want to force the user's interface to act
non-intutitvely in order to encourage the behavior I prefer" issues
that -should- rightfully be dumped in the bit bucket (as opposed to "I
want to get good behavior at least -some- of the time", which is worth
consideration...but should really be done in a way that produces good
behavior all of the time given reasonable behavior, not simply "in
many expected cases" like reply-to munging does).
Mind, the one list I run -does- munge reply-to, at the request of
pretty much all the subscribers -- I'd far rather remove that, but
found it politically impossible.
--
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 '---''(_/--' (_/-'