Re: Posting to this list

Doug Schepers schreef:
> 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;

That’s why when you reply-to-all, it’s always a good idea to briefly 
look at the recipients list, and consider whether the mail is still 
relevant to all. And thin down the list appropriately.

I myself most of the time do this, not always, but usually.

> 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;

This is MUCH MUCH better than the alternative; a personal reply ending 
up on the mailinglist. Mail is kept off-list for a reason, and this can 
be *extremely* awkward. I fortunately have never gotten in one of those 
really awkward situations, but I have in the past sent several private 
messages accidentally to a reply-to munging mailinglist, which was quite 
unpleasant.

Also, you might mistake an off-list reply for an on-list one that has 
been sent mistakenly. There’s a lot of reason to send on-topic replies 
off-list, because e.g. the sender thinks it has already been said and 
doesn’t want to clutter the list more, or for some other reason doesn’t 
want to bother the list with his or her opinion.

I’ve had a couple of times already that I sent an off-list reply, and 
the ‘replee’ responded to my reply on-list. That’s a bit annoying :). 
That’s why most people explicitly add an (off-list) note at the top of 
their mail or in the subject when they reply off-list, just to be sure 
it doesn’t end up back there.

> 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?);

Maybe there’s a ‘reply to list’ extension.

(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/1900 ? Although it 
seems to be meant for newsgroups.)

> 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.

Good thing is though, if you don’t thin down the list, there’s a 
reasonable chance someone else will do it, which will carry through in 
any subsequent replies.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.