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digest 1999-03-04 #001.txt
11:30 PM 3/3/99 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science"
Daily SLS Email Digest
-> accidental responses
by Phoebe Sengers
-> Re: accidental responses
by WAYNEM@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU
-> Re: accidental responses
by Noel Gough
-> Re: accidental responses
by endwar@phys.psu.edu (Andrew Russ)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 Mar 1999 00:29:39 -0800
From: Phoebe Sengers
Subject: accidental responses
Dear SLS-ers,
I would like to request that the "reply-to" address for the
SLS list be
set to the original sender instead of the whole list. This is the
default for many lists because it prevents people from accidentally
sending personal responses to the entire list. I know I am by no means
the only list member to suffer from this embarrassing phenomenon! If
the "reply-to" is changed to the original poster, people may
accidentally send responses intended for the whole list to individuals,
but these problems are substantially easier to correct than the ones
that arise now.
Phoebe Sengers
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 Mar 1999 11:00:56 -0800
From: WAYNEM@HUMnet.UCLA.EDU
Subject: Re: accidental responses
Phoebe Sengers wrote:
>I would like to request that the "reply-to" address for
the SLS list be
>set to the original sender instead of the whole list. This is the
>default for many lists because it prevents people from accidentally
>sending personal responses to the entire list.
Hi,
Why don't we have a silent vote on this! I've turned off the
"reply-to" for
the time being, so if you reply to this message your vote should go to
me
only. If you want your reply to go to the whole list, you'll have to
manually enter the list name.
If the majority of votes by, say, Friday are for "reply-to"
off, then it will
stay off.
Wayne
/----------------------------------------------------------/
Wayne Miller waynem@humnet.ucla.edu
Manager, HCF Academic Services / Asst. Adj. Professor
Humanities Computing Facility 343 Kinsey Hall, UCLA
Germanic Languages 212 Royce Hall, UCLA
(310) 206-2004 FAX: (310) 825-7428
/----------------------------------------------------------/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 Mar 1999 13:57:03 -0800
From: Noel Gough
Subject: Re: accidental responses
At 5:59 AM +1100 4/3/99, WAYNEM@humnet.ucla.edu wrote:
>Phoebe Sengers wrote:
>>I would like to request that the "reply-to" address
for the SLS list be
>>set to the original sender instead of the whole list. This is
the
>>default for many lists because it prevents people from
accidentally
>>sending personal responses to the entire list.
>
>Hi,
>
>Why don't we have a silent vote on this! I've turned off the
"reply-to" for
>the time being, so if you reply to this message your vote should go
to me
>only. If you want your reply to go to the whole list, you'll have
to
>manually enter the list name.
I vote for "reply-to" off. Note that with email applications
such as
Eudora, command-option-R replies to the sender with a Cc. to the list,
so
it makes the deliberate choice (sender only or sender + list) very
easy...
Noel
Noel Gough
Associate Professor
Deakin Centre for Education and Change
Deakin University
221 Burwood Highway
Burwood Victoria 3125
Australia
+61 (0)3 9244 3854 (voice)
+61 (0)3 9244 6752 (fax)
noelg@deakin.edu.au
http://www2.deakin.edu.au/e&c/dcec/members/Gough.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 3 Mar 1999 19:26:15 -0800
From: endwar@phys.psu.edu (Andrew Russ)
Subject: Re: accidental responses
I pay attention to the "From" line and know that anything
from
"litsci..." will go to the list if i do a straight reply.
That was the
point of the mailing list, to create dialogue of that sort, where posts
would go through the whole group.
The question will be whether it's better to have people who think
they are mailing to one person sending their message to the whole
list, or to have people who think they are posting a reply to the whole
list actually sending a message back to only the original sender. The
problem with this is that a lot of the traffic on the list when we _do_
have discussions will disappear, along with whatever replies follow.
I use a unix mail prgram (primitive), so doing CC options
and the like are a bit of a pain.
If this group does go for turning "reply-to" off, thenit would
be nice if the "message
headers could be structured so that there would be a line with an option
to CC to the
group that was "commented out" so that you could delete a
character and reply to the
group. I don't know if that can be done, though. (one cute option is
to put something
like "NOSPAM" in the list name that will cause the messages to
be undeliverable unless
those characters are removed. ) If not, then at the very least each
post should
have a footer line with the address of the list in it so it can be typed
into
the To: line in the header if i want to address the group.
But i would prefer that the reply to default be to the group. And that
at the beginning of each message that the sender's address should be
included, and then the
onus of responsibility would be on the person sending a personal reply
to paste
thea ddress into the right place on the headers, or on the to: line.
It just
takes a bit of extra thinking.
andrew
