WG list behavior

[Terry Allen:]

| [Tim is getting an extra copy of this because I haven't yet seen
| the results of the vote on list behavior.]

Er...  Right.  I was just now getting around to that.

The question was whether to keep the current behavior of the mail
server (autoreplies go to the individual) or change it to work the
other way around (autoreplies go to the list).  The case for changing
it is that we get rid of duplicate replies from people who won't take
the trouble to change the "To" and "cc" fields in their reply header,
which takes a few seconds extra for the sender but if not done is
exceedingly annoying for those of us who post a lot or have to
maintain personal archives.  The case against changing it is that if
it's changed, then it's easy to accidentally send private replies to
the whole list, which is rare but potentially disastrous.

The final vote was:

Yes, change the server to autoreply to the whole list: 3

No, keep it the way it is and get tough on people who deliberately
cause trouble: 18

A couple of those voting No also noted that many people consider
copying the original sender as well as the list to be proper
netiquette, which means that a get-tough policy has to be accompanied
by a lot of explanations and warnings for newbies.  We've just been
through enough discussion of this to make further explanation
unnecessary, but those of us who become easily annoyed by duplicates
will have to remember that people coming into the process and people
who are just being absent-minded sometimes have their autopilots set
on "polite" rather than "inconsiderate."

Jon

Received on Friday, 20 June 1997 12:48:06 UTC