[OS X TeX] Lobbying for Reply-To as it used to be

[Gerben Wierda]

I think Gary's poll is a good idea. Let me add one argument in favour 
of going back to the old way:

>> The document (posted in this thread yesterday) at 
>> http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html explains why this 
>> (altering the reply-to field the way it used to be done) is a bad 
>> idea far better than I could have, before reading it.
>
> This is fodder for religious wars and I do not want to start one. The 
> document above is more or less elm-based and is written from a certain 
> use perspective.
>
> I look at this issue more in a semantic way. What sort of list is it? 
> Is it a discussion group, a asynchronous electronic meeting? In that 
> case, there should IMO be a reply-to towards the list. In a meeting, 
> talking to the group is default, talking to your neighbour is the 
> exception. Is the group less of a community but is it an open group? 
> Then I prefer a list without reply-to set to the list.
>
> So, sometimes I prefer reply-to to the list. Sometimes I prefer 
> reply-to to the author. As we seldom see a posting on the list that 
> should have gone to the author only, and since this list is about 
> sharing knowledge, I do like to see the answers given to other people. 
> I can sometimes learn something from it. So, yes, one can hit 
> reply-all by default, in which case the message is sent twice, once 
> through the list and the other directly (Mail.app has a history of not 
> handling those duplicate messages correctly btw, one just used to 
> disappear in a black hole). But since my replies generally are of the 
> 'useful for everybody' category (or at least I hope so) I need to hit 
> reply-all all the time. If that is true for everyone (sice this is 
> mostly a 'sharing' forum) it has just become non-default to do what is 
> the semantic default, i.e. a reply should normally go to the group.

So in my view, the reply-to group on this list is preferable because 
most replies to questions are useful for most people on the list. If 
the list was a lot of repeatd newbie questions with a few kind sould 
like Bruno helping them out, I think a reply-to sender would be better. 
But this list is not like that. I actually like to see the answers to 
most questions.

I have no strong feelings either way, but my own lack of alertness does 
lead to messages only sent to some people and not to all where it would 
be clearly beneficial for all. But that is of course my problem. Not 
one that is easily solved because I tend to simplify the huge amounts 
of mail I process by not thinking about it and just only hitting reply. 
And assuming that replying to any message on a list will go to that 
list of course....

G

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