On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 2009-11-19 at 09:43 -0500, Brian Mearns wrote: >> >> Even 7 years ago, I don't think this article was really as relevant as >> the author seems to. If you're using Elm, then fantastic, but I >> personally have never come across a mail agent that supports "reply to >> group". The much more common "reply-all" feature is too often a >> detriment to communications and to the network. Unless the mailing >> list program is smart enough to detect that someone in the list is >> also explicitly given as a recipient and removes that address from the >> list of people to whom the message is sent (I would be fairly >> surprised and moderately impressed if it did), then reply-all will >> cause excess traffic on the network and will end up with the previous >> author receiving two copies. > > I would be annoyed at mail software that did that; direct addressed mail > should be delivered. Users can choose to dedupe mail if they want using > the unique message-id. (And many mail servers do do this). > > As for your assertion that few mail clients support reply to list/reply > to group; I note that you use gmail, and gmail is pretty feature poor. > You might try using thunderbird or evolution, both of which support > reply to list and have for quite some time. I use gmail because it travels, and I was under the impression (from earlier in this thread) that Thunderbird does not support this natively, but requires and extension. > ... >> If I was the only one suffering from this problem, I would agree that >> the issue is mine to resolve. Based on the three other follow -ups >> that have said the same thing, it seems to me to be a pretty common >> problem. > > The alternate configuration also causes problems. This list has some N > subscribers, of which 3 agree that they current config confuses them > from time to time. That doesn't provide any evidence that the other N do > or don't get confuses, nor that if the configuration is changed what > number will get confused in the opposite direction. > > -Rob > It would be N-4, actually, but I get your point. My point was that there are 4 people (including myself) who have voiced their opinion in support of my suggestion, 2 who have opposed it, and 2 who have joined the conversation without expressing support or opposition (please confirm that, I think I counted correctly). No, this doesn't offer much of a cross section of the group, but without polling the list, there's not much of hope of getting one. Anyway, I think we've wasted more time on this then it takes for me to just correct the error when I forget to address it correctly, so I'll just leave my comments as they are and let the mailing list gods make their decision. -Brian -- Feel free to contact me using PGP Encryption: Key Id: 0x3AA70848 Available from: http://keys.gnupg.net
