[TriLUG] About "Private notes"

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:33:54 -0400
Alan Porter <porter at trilug.org> wrote:

> On 04/18/2012 02:53 PM, Peter Neilson wrote:
> > When I ask my e-mail grinder (Opera) to reply only to the originator
> > of a post, on some lists I get just the one person. On other lists
> > (including TRILUG), the reply goes to the group unless I carefully
> > intervene.
> 
> Recently, we've had several "oops" replies to the list, and that has
> caused the steering committee to question whether we have the ideal
> settings on mailman (our mailing list server).
> 
> Our current configuration has the "reply_goes_to_list" option set to
> "this list".  The other alternatives are "poster" or "explicit
> address".
> 
> From the mailman documentation:
> 
>     Where are replies to list messages directed?  Poster is strongly
>     recommended for most mailing lists.
> 
>     When poster is selected, the reply-to line will be written by
>     Mailman so that persons hitting reply in their mail program will
>     send their response back to the individual who posted the note.
> When this value is set to "this list" the reply-to line will be
> rewritten so that persons hitting reply in their mail program will
> send their response back to the list itself.  When this value is set
> to "explicit address" the Reply-To header will use the value that is
>     provided in the field below.
> 
>     While the program suggests that this be set to poster, you should
>     consider the purpose of the list in selecting this value. Lists
> that intend to focus on discussion are best set to "list" to encourage
>     conversation. Lists used for announcements are best set to poster
> to prevent unwanted traffic and the inadvertent broadcast of replies.
> 
> 
> The reasoning behind this setting was that the TriLUG list is a
> DISCUSSION list and not an ANNOUNCEMENT list.  Most of the time, when
> someone replies, they want the reply to go to all 700+ members to
> carry the discussion forward.  Personal off-list replies are the
> exception rather than the norm.
> 
> However, I understand that this configuration can be
> counter-intuitive.
> 
> On the plus side, it gives us the occasional accidental reply-to-list,
> and those can be good for a laugh.  Perhaps a second benefit is that
> it conditions us to react a little kinder than we might otherwise do,
> because we're always scared that our one-off reply is going to go to
> the whole group.  :-D
> 
> 
> Opinions?  Gripes?
> 
> (Remember that your sysadmins, policy setters and mail-garbage-men are
> generous unpaid volunteers).

I strongly believe you should keep it as is. I strongly believe that
nobody on this list has the time to teach one person at a time. I
strongly believe that having a community mailing list instead of
some sort of email switchtrack turntable engenders broad-based
conversations in which the total is much more than the sum of the
parts.

To my way of thinking, defaulting to reply-to-sender trashes the value
of a discussion list.

Yes, yes, I know, I know, if everyone's email client precisely
followed the RFC's, and if everyone follows the exact same precise
procedures, each of us can easily choose to to go list-wide when we
desire. That's a big if. What happens to me on these lists where the
default is reply to sender is I often forget to include the list, and
end up either having to write it over again or having that part of the
conversation just peter out.

By the way, I just tried "reply to sender" with Claws-Mail, and it
works perfectly, sending it only to the sender.

I have one more tip. Whenever I want something to be offlist, I alter
the Subject liststamp. In other words, I change [TriLUG] to [Tri
OFFLIST LUG]. That way, responses to my private message go in my inbox,
not in my TriLUG folder.

SteveT