-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At some point hitherto, Dana S. Tellier hath spake thusly: > I have a better idea... how about (this has definitely been > mentioned before) people just take a moment to note who they're > replying to? Making a mistake and replying to all when you meant to > make a private reply or vice versa is HUMAN ERROR.
Humans are quite often creatures of habit, and this error is, for that reason, hard to avoid for those people who it snags... > It is *not* the fault of the mail client, it is not because "they > had their reply-to set and I write so many e-mail messages, I > shouldn't *have* to check", or the developer's fault, or anyone > else's fault but your own. I have personal experience with doing > this (at WORK, no less...), and from what I gather, you do too, > Derek. Oh yes, as some people on this list who've been around long enough will attest... There's a certain squeegee joke that surfaces from time to time as a result. > However, I merely accepted the fact that I had written the e-mail > too quickly and had not paid enough attention to what I was doing. > (The reply-to was set to the group mailing list, btw) People need to > take the responsibility for their own actions. If you make a > mistake and send a private post to a group, or vice versa, that is > YOUR fault, and should be accepted as such. While I definitely agree with this sentiment, people make mistakes, and are creatures of habit, including in the types of mistakes they commonly make (have words that you commonly mistype?). Software can often very easily work around that fact, much as in this case. So if that's true, why not take advantage of it? FWIW, I no longer fall victim to that problem, thanks to the fact that Mutt has features for handling mailing lists, and a feature to ignore any reply-to header, both of which I use extensively. Were that not the case, I would fall prey to reply-to nearly every time the opportunity arose. Despite that, I'm still opposed to setting reply-to on general principle. The only valid reason to set it, IMO, is if you're (unavoidably, for some reason) sending mail from an address that can't be replied to, or at which you will not receive replies in time for some time-critical thing, and you need to make sure that replies will get to you. One more point, and then I'll shut up. This argument (reply-to vs. no reply-to) comes up very often on mailing lists. Ask yourself why that is. The answer, I believe, is that both behaviors annoy people. They contradict the way they work. In a sense, neither behavior is the "right" one. However, if the major mailers had well-designed and well-publicized features to deal with replying to mailing lists, I think this problem would likely go away entirely. - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - --------------------------------------------- I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE9LanWdjdlQoHP510RApZJAJ91d1P7D4/sv2vZoRGj/vHIWbH39gCfaJYe twaP5wn5qaJ9113RdqnCQCY= =3zJQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
