On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 08:55:26PM +0100, Brad Knowles wrote: > Do they prefer to have messages which they thought would be > private replies being blasted to the whole list?
The reality of the modern, public internet is that the opposite is far more common -- right or wrong, in most common, public internet circles (I'm talking the far more prevelant "recipe sharing"-style lists, not "RFC management"-style lists), people have grown to accept as standard that in group discussion lists, unless you're intentionally deviating from the thread topic, it is customary to respond to the list as a whole, and not in private. As such, they are confused when this is not the default setting and have to break their own well established habits to respond to the list. We now have upwards of 400 public lists on our mailman server, and I have heard complaints over this matter from every single one of them. And no, that is not an exaggeration. For years now, I explain upfront upon list creation why things are set this way, and that the owner is responsible for changing it if they wish -- which they *never* understand or appreciate, and thus usually ignore until the first complaints roll in. Mailman eases the discussion format for less technology savvy users, and its popularity has grown for that fact. Those users don't understand a whit of header munging -- they just want their subscribers to be able to hit the big "Reply" button and have their response return to the list -- just like it would on a web forum or through most standard usenet clients -- and when it doesn't do that, they get complaints and forward them to me. Of note, the most recent complaint came from subscribers of a list devoted to the discussion of Utah's UTOPIA project, which is well populated by this region's technological elite, many of whom were extremely surprised at this default setting and considered it an antiquated standard and requested it be changed. I should say, however, that I agree fully with the logic behind avoiding header munging, and do appreciate that it is standard in Mailman. As was well illustrated in another reply, there are very, very appropriate times for it, and other list software fails in not offering this option. But personally, in my daily experience, having the defaults reversed would save a lot of time and headaches. Just my two pennies in a dead, done debate. -- warren woodward XMission DSL Domo/Mailman [EMAIL PROTECTED] (801) 303-0819 (877) XMISSION "I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me." Dylan Thomas ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ This message was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe or change your options at http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
