[tdf-discuss] Re: Re: Re: overall communication guidelines andreply-tomangling

"Friedrich Strohmaier" <damokles4-listen@bits-fritz.de> wrote in message 
news:4ED91461.9050800@bits-fritz.de...
> Hi Harold, *,
>
> Am 30.11.2011 11:59 schrieb Harold Fuchs:
>
> > I think the idea that a simple "Reply" should only go the OP is very 
> > poor:
>
> Thanks for uncovering other contributor's real nature, who have
> different opinion|experience.
>
> Great to see You're not affected..

I'm really not sure what this means. I think I should say "thank you for the 
compliment".

> > 1. People will not be able to see whether or not a question has been
> > answered, or if it has been answered "well".
> > 2. People who didn't ask the question might nevertheless be interested
> > in [some aspect(s) of] the answer but they won't get it.
> > 3. Many of the people who ask questions are not technically familiar
> > with the intricacies of e-mail. Thus, if they have a follow up to an
> > answer and just hit Reply (which they will because they don't know
> > "better"), that follow up will *only* go to the person who responded to
> > the original question instead of to the list.
> > 4. In general the scheme will proliferate "private" conversations which
> > is the exact opposite of the intention behind using a list.
> > 5. If you want this sort of behaviour, use a *forum* where the
> > questioner can "subscribe" to only his/her question threads
>
> You describe a scenario of people with zero experience in mailinglist
> discussion. These definitely are a minority, where a significant part of
> is willing to learn how to do well. As mentioned earlier: technical
> reply issues are *one* of several things to learn to handle.

Here I have to disagree. The people who most need the help are the least 
experienced. Also, as time goes by users of Office Suites have less and less 
experience of "real" internet usage. The concept of a mailing list is 
increasingly unknown. Many (most?) think they are talking to a help desk and 
will only hit Reply with no understanding that Reply All is necessary. You 
want support, contact the company that supplied the product. Someone replies 
and you want more, just reply. It's one-to-one. It's bad enough trying to 
explain to the *users* the differences between a mail-list, a Usenet group 
and a web forum. Even apparently experienced users don't know the difference 
between News (NNTP) and Mail (SMTP). Just trawl the OOo Users list for 
evidence.

In addition, as someone who has frequently answered questions in the OOo 
Users list, I don't *want* private mail. My filters put OOo mail in a 
special folder. That all gets messed up when people reply directly to me. I 
know many other OOo volunteers do the same.

So, *please* keep the Address Mangling ot force people to use a forum - 
which I like even less but that's another discussion.

> > Perhaps for "expert" groups like Dev, the idea *might* be OK
>
> Things to learn to reply in a useful way, don't require expert skills.
> Ideally its a matter of learning a handful *simple* rules, to handle
> *all* situations.
>
> > but for the lists designed for general support I really don't think it
> > is sensible.
>
> If You define "providing advice for people not related to the project
> work" as "general support" You're right. But there are many community
> people who already expressed their opinion, mailinglists not being the
> best choice for that - I'm one of those ;o)).
>
>
> Gruß/regards
> --
> Friedrich Strohmaier
> Melchingen/Germany ;o))
>
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