Bill wrote: > people expect replies to go to the person
"People" ? I've been told that I occasionally fit into that category, so please tally at least one exception to your assertion, and allow me to counter with my own: Mailing lists are understood to be (analogous to) meetings conducted in a (semi-)public setting. If I wanted to communicate with someone on a private, point-to-point basis I wouldn't post my message on a list. Messages received via a list are understood to have come "from" the list and to be "of" the list; they're public discourse, just like the give and take in your town's meeting hall. The normal, default behavior in such contexts is for each party to say their thing to all present, not to whisper it in the ear of just one other attendee. I'll note that this is such a commonly held understanding that on those occasions that I *do* engage in one-to-one followup emails with other subscribers to a mailing list, we frequently insert something like: [private message] ...at the beginning of the message body to make it clear that we've done something that is *not* the norm, ie. we've gone "out of band". --M _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
