[tdf-discuss] Re: overall communication guidelines and reply-to mangling

On 11/28/2011 08:23 AM, Michael Meeks wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> On Fri, 2011-11-25 at 22:19 +0100, Stefan Weigel wrote:
> > From my point of view, the mailing list is the sender.
> > When I hit the "Reply" button, this has to go back to the sender,
> > who sent that to me, which is the mailing list and not Regina.
>
>       Sure sure. But you must get mail every day that is CC'd to several
> people. Surely you get to understand the difference between "Reply" and
> "Reply to all" ? the latter will keep the CC.
>
>       At the end of the day, IMHO all this comes down to a simple choice:
>
>       * make it easy for established list users to avoid having to
>         think whom they want to reply to, and needing to press
>         ctrl-shift-r vs. ctrl-r (or whatever)
> or
>       * make it easy for new and peripherally involved users to get
>         replies to their casual E-mails without doing a long list of
>         operations.
>
>       Where by a long list of operations, I mean, that in order to get a
> reply to your mail/question, first you need to:
>
>       a) be clueful and know you havn't a chance of getting a reply
>       b) send a mail to subscribe-foo@a.b.c
>       c) wait for the reply
>       d) confirm acceptance of mailing list
>       e) while (time < max_time_wait_for_any_reply) {
>               f) recieve mail, delete uninteresting messages
>               g) read & respond to tiny minority of messages that
>                  are a reply to your query.
>       h) } send a mail to unsuscribe-foo@a.b.c
>       i) confirm un-subscribe from unsubscribe-foo@a.b.c
>
>       In my view, most people fall down at a) - they just never appear to get
> a reply to their message. To ask someone to do steps b->i in order to
> interact with us is one that strangles community IMHO.
>
>       HTH,
>
>               Michael.

You've obviously never spent time on the OOo user & discuss lists...

I recommend leaving as is *and* requiring users to register when posting
to lists. We went through the 'non-registered' users issue on the OOo
user & discuss lists for years. Feel free to browse the OOo archives for
all the time wasted on attempting to respond to non-registered users
(including header filters w/bugs filed accordingly etc., etc). If you'd
like non-registered users to post on the dev list feel free to ask that
the change be made there (and use as a test bed), but please do not
modify the other lists.

I subscribe to over 80 lists (via gmane.org) and respond regularly to
10-15 daily. Were I required to adjust my standard 'Reply' to
specifically reply to the list rather than the individual poster I'd
have to make major modifications to my client (SeaMonkey). I view and
respond to a list, not to individual posters.

Further, the changes that you are requesting (if I understand them
correctly) would mean that I'd then have an additional, direct email in
my inbox from each list poster when I've specifically chosen to view &
respond via an nntp source (gmane.org) rather than list email. Your
request now places the burden on each list user to make changes in order
to avoid responding to the list poster and instead reply to the list in
general.

The simple solution is to require *all* posters to register/subscribe
prior to posting. In the process the prospective poster is warned that:
1) the post is public and subject to viewing by *anyone* with internet
access, 2) explain what an email list actually is, 3) how to view and
reply via alternate means instead of email (nabble, gmane.org, forums
etc), and 4) how to unsubscribe should they find that 'lists' aren't for
them.  This helps to eliminate the "please remove my post from the
internet", "I'm going to sue you for posting my personal information",
"why am I getting flooded with these emails from you people", etc.,  and
the aggravation of those of use who do attempt to assist users on such
lists trying to figure out if the poster is registered/subscribed or not.

If you wish to reply to each poster individually, then perhaps you can
modify Evolution 3.0.2 to conform to Reply and 'Reply All' to suit your
requirements.

-1



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