On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 09:01:42AM -0400, Dave Nebinger wrote > > Why people use "Reply to all" on a list such as this I have no idea... > > Because the standard for most lists is that a reply goes to the > original sender only and 'reply to all' is used to send a message > to the OP and the list.
Which *STILL* ends up causing the original sender to see two copies. > The gentoo list is the only one that we have seen that violates > this policy because our admins feel that w/o replying to the list > knowledge would be lost. First of all, "the standard for most lists" that you talk about *USED* to be to do exactly what this list does right now. Then Chip Rosenthal came along and put up a whine at http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html which can be summarized as follows... "Duh, I'm an imcompetent point-n-drooler who sends private messages to public mailing lists. Please protect me against myself by defaulting all mailing list mail to go back to the original sender and making it more difficult to actually reply to the mailing list. And who cares if it screws up things for everybody else?". This "policy" is not enshrined in RFCs, and is about as "official" as Netscape's and Outlook's default to send email in HTML format. However, just like the HTML email abomination, it has become widely adopted. It is an extreme example of the "one size fits all" approach. I can see personals, or for-sale lists, or "announce" lists having the reply go back to only the sender. It makes sense *IN THAT CONTEXT*. In the context of most public discussion lists, like this one, it makes sense to have replies go back to the list. -- Walter Dnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> An infinite number of monkeys pounding away on keyboards will eventually produce a report showing that Windows is more secure, and has a lower TCO, than linux. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
