Re: [META] proper use of mailing list
Re: [META] proper use of mailing list
- Subject: Re: [META] proper use of mailing list
- From: Sander Tekelenburg <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 00:28:19 +0100
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At 12:03 -0800 UTC, on 29-12-2001, Chuq von Rospach wrote:
>
On 12/28/01 8:07 AM, "Sander Tekelenburg" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>
> Could you all please stop sending your message to every address that
>
> the previous poster just happened to add? I'm getting tired of
>
> needlessly receiving duplicates of many of this list's messages.
>
>
Then you should teach your client to strip duplicates out or your incoming
>
mail stream.
What do you do when you break your leg - use pain killers[*], or try to get
it fixed?
>
Trying to get everyone else to do it the way you prefer won't
>
work, and forgets that there are are lot of different people on the list,
>
and they have their preferred ways to use the list, too. Would you be happy
>
if someone came up and said "I insist you CC me on all mail you send to the
>
list?" of course not. And you'd ignore them, most likely.
Actually, no. I'm usually more polite than that. I would point out *why* I do
not honour such a request. I much prefer going through the trouble of
pointing such things out, so that people can start making choices based upon
knowledge/understanding, than keeping them in the dark.
Isn't that the whole point of a mailing list like this - informing each
other? Then why should that only apply to AppleScript?
>
So show the same tolerance of other people's preferences that you'd want
>
shown to yours. People use the lists the way THEY feel comfortable with. If
>
you want it to look a certain way, teach your client to do it for you,
>
don't try to retrain the hundreds of folks on the list that what you want
>
takes
>
precedence over what everyone else wants.
Sounds a bit like saying that if some people prefer to drive 200mph through
urban areas the rest of us should just have to deal with that. Not my ideal
society. (I know that the issue at hand isn't quite as grave. It's the same
principle though.)
I just meant to draw people's attention to how their method affects others.
Some may feel that they have a good enough reason to stick to their method.
Some may not have been aware of the result and will consider looking for
another method.
In my experience, on the Net people are often quite unaware of how what they
send/publish shows up at the other end. Quite understandable, given how the
Net works, but not a reason to not point it out now and then. In fact,
pointing it out is often the only way, because the sender/publisher simply
cannot physically see how his material shows up at the recipient's end. If
noone had ever bothered to point these things out to me, I might not have
been aware of it myself.
There are of course valid reasons to send a message to multiple addresses,
but it makes sense to use the CC header for that. The fact that in this case,
we're talking about messages with multiple addresses in the *To* header,
suggests that those posters didn't make a very conscious choice. After
reading this thread, they can make a more conscious choice (whatever it may
be).
>
> Suggestion to Chuq: How about adding a Reply-To:
>
> <email@hidden> header?
>
>
Read the FAQ:
>
>
<http://www.lists.apple.com/cgi-bin/mwf/topic_show.pl?id=208>
Thanks for the referer.
I see 2 valid points there:
1) protecting Apple employees from accidental embarrassment
2) Overriding posters' Reply-To headers
That the other arguments, IMO, don't make sense doesn't matter because
1) the above 2 points are valid enough
2) The FAQ states that this isn't open for discussion anyway.
So I won't again ask for a listserver-generated Reply-To header.
[*] For Eudora users: with the help of
<
http://acorn.he.net/~gjb/download/persheaders.sit>, you can define 'extra'
headers per personality. That makes it possible to have a filter that, when
catching messages from this list, applies an action that sets the responding
personality to one that inserts a "Reply-To:
<email@hidden>" header. Not perfect, because when you
post a *new* message to the list, you'll still have to remember to send it
with your preferred personality. But it's better than nothing. It at least
solves the problem when you send replies. (Unfortunately Eudora's "outgoing
message" filters are only applied *after* sending. So the above is the best
solution I could come up with for now.)
HTH
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--
Sander Tekelenburg, <
http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>