[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>... > It seems to me that > replies should not be sent to the entire list but rather to the poster. The > poster than should be able to summarize the responses and advise the list. I > get many (possibly too many) repeat postings, often listing three or four > responses to a posting. I would, to help me in terms of time, like to see the > poster receive responses directly and then have that person post a single, > summarized list of the responses.
The disadvantage is that then (i) I would often reply to posts that have had perfectly good responses already (ii) Mistaken replies can be disagreed with immediately rather than in retrospect (which may often be too late to help anyone, or worse, the error may not be challenged at all if the original poster fails to follow up to the group, as often would happen) (iii) It is the discussions that follow on from the questions that bring the most value to me. Even the posts I disagree with strongly can often prove very helpful in clarifying just what is the crucial point in some issue. Once I got my PhD, my opportunities to learn more statistics in a formal setting became quite limited; I have plenty of informal sources of education of course, including journals. But for me one of the most useful sources of ideas and understanding is the discussions in sci.stat.*. For me taking discussion off line and then summarising back would make this a much less useful resource. That's not to say off-list replies aren't useful; often they're the best way to deal with certain things. I would just prefer that it not be entrenched as the standard for the group. Glen . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
