Re: Posting to this list

Hi, Thomas-

Thomas Pike wrote:
> Doug Schepers wrote:
>>> This would be easily solved by adding public-html@w3.org in the
>>> Reply-To field. Then people could hit Reply instead of Reply-All.
>>>
>>> Can someone arrange this?
>> This is a pernicious problem across W3C lists... maybe this could be
>> changed for all of them?
> 
> There are various arguments given against the so-called "Reply-to
> munging" that you are suggesting, eg. see
> http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html for one example.
> 
> Not that I actually agree with these arguments myself, but it may be why
> the W3C has kept things as they currently are.

Ah, well, I hadn't realized what a barrel of monkeys I'd opened.  I 
guess I'll just have to live with it.

For the record, my personal reply-to-poster-considered-harmful list:

1) when several people reply-all to a post, it builds up a huge list of 
people, all of whom are most likely already on the list in question; 
when the topic shifts (as it usually does), each of these people gets 
duplicates of a thread they may no longer be interested in;

2) more than a few times have I gotten a reply that seems like it was 
intended for the public list, but was sent only to me; I then have to 
ask the sender if it's okay to send the email, and my reply, to the 
list;  more than once have I personally sent email only to the original 
poster, on accident;

3) I have to spend some little amount of time (and attention) each time 
I send an email pruning my reply-to list to prevent the above from 
occurring; it's only an irritant, but I honestly don't see why we all 
should have to do this time waster (does anyone know a way to get 
Thunderbird to do this automagically?);

4) even if I and other people remember to be conscientious about 
judicious pruning, others will fail to or forget to, and I will get 
multiple replies; a duplicate remover won't work, because in the 
instance where I am getting multiple copies from multiple lists I'm 
subscribed to (for cross-posts), I want a copy in each list folder for 
context.

Regards-
-Doug

Received on Sunday, 1 April 2007 22:03:58 UTC