"David W. Tamkin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Shawn Lin wrote,
>
>>I was on a list like that once too, where Reply-to was to
>>the sender. VERY little traffic on that list, LOTS of
>>questions, never an answer! Even when I'd search through their
>>archives... all questions and no answers.
>
>That certainly is not my experience with reply-to-sender lists.
>Generally people have known how to use their reply-to-all
>commands to respond publicly when they wished to, and RTS lists
>are as busy as RTL lists, except that they don't carry items
>that were intended privately but accidentally sent to the whole
>list. A poster who specifically wants public replies can always
>point Reply-To: to the list on his or her post, and an RTS list
>leaves it unmo- lested. If people did not do that on the list
>Shawn remembers, then they may well have preferred private
>replies.
I didn't want to respond again to this thread, given its off-topic
nature, but I feel a second note is warranted here.
As I mentioned before, I'm a ListMom, and have managed well over 50 lists
(probably closer to 70). Some have had over 10,000 members. I also am a
member of a ListMom group that manages and discusses many more lists
(many of the members of that group have 50 or more lists of their own).
Shawn is *absolutely* correct in his description of reply-to-sender
lists. I don't say this to "prove anyone wrong," but to add some
perspective other than the "well, I'm on a list and..." anecdotal
accounts.
Among those who manage mailing lists for a living, or as part of their
job, there are clear "personalities" for mailing lists. In general, and
with few exceptions:
Reply-to-sender lists get less traffic, fewer answers sent to the list,
and are generally less informative on the whole. On the other hand, they
get less off-topic mail and less idle chatter. The exception to this rule
is the organized and disciplined list where the sender summarizes all
replies and posts a response summary to the list so that everyone
benefits from the replies. But such lists are *very* rare.
Reply-to-list lists get more traffic, more answers to the list, and are
generally more informative on the whole. However, they get much more
off-topic mail and much more idle chatter. Once in a while they get a
"supposed-to-be-private" response to the list. The exception to this rule
is the moderated list where ListMoms review posts and cut out the
off-topic and "noisy" posts.
>If incoming Reply-To: addresses were preserved somewhere, I
>could rename that to Reply-To: and have the full RTS format I
>like while the RTL crowd could get it the way they please.
While some lists don't include the original Reply-To header for each
message, the From header is usually sufficient to reply privately to the
original author, and most email clients allow you to reply to that
address fairly easily. The number of email users who have a Reply-To
address that is different from their From address is very small... too
small to justify changing a list's management style just for them ;-)
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