On Mar 2, 2008, at 8:19 PM, Jim Raden wrote:
I saw your admonition about culling, and I wasn't sure exactly what
it means, mostly because I couldn't find any definitive answers
about how to reply to posts. I'll bet many people (myself included)
just hit the "reply" button on their email client and let *it*
decide. Depending on the email client, its configuration and so on,
that results could be annoying, but I think it's mainly a sin of
omission rather than a willful breach of netiquette.
I assume by "culling" you mean replying to a mailing list message
but omitting the email address(es) of the sender, receiver, and so
on. I did some research and couldn't find a definitive answer.
Google Groups Help was not helpful, and the msysgit information
page doesn't talk about it either. One FAQ on mailing list
etiquette suggests that replies should be directed *only* to the
group -- i.e. [email protected] -- and not CC'd to the
person who sent the email. (source: http://www.gweep.ca/~edmonds/
usenet/ml-etiquette.html)
I always hit "Reply All" and I guess this is what Dscho also
suggests. The reason behind is that mails that include me in
CC will appear in my inbox, while mails that only address the
list will be automatically filtered to a separate mailbox. As a
consequence your chance that I will answer is much lower if you
cull me from CC and also the chance that I miss an important
reply to a mail increases.
I've been a user of the internet since 1990, long enough to
remember the shrieks of horror that greeted people from .COM
domains, and especially AOL users. If my ignorance of netiquette is
reminiscent of that, I fully appreciate the irony. :)
Since you are one of the major contributors to the group and to the
project, I'll defer to your wisdom on this matter. What *is* the
best way to reply to the group? (There's probably some FAQ that
answers the question -- I just couldn't find it.)
I don't know if there is any netiquette on this but I know that
the practice on the git mailing lists is to reply to the sender
and build CC from the original CC + the original TO. This is
what "Reply All" does for me.
Steffen
