Re: Reply-to (was: dselect oddities)
On Mon, 18 May 1998 11:40:26 -0400 (EDT), Scott Ellis wrote:
>I'm afraid Ill have to drag out this again. Please read:
>http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
Read it, laughed at every point in it as every single part of it is false
and misleading. It looks like it was written years ago and fails to address
the most important point I made... Without the reply-to it forces the users
of the list to cull the To/CC list else we are sending out duplicates of
every message to an ever increasing number of recipiants. I loved his biased
view of of how many keystrokes it takes since he does take the above problem
into consideration.
The only valid issue he raises is a technical one where a user wishes
replies directed back to a different address. This is near moot because in
this day and age most people are sending from their valid email. So three
conditions must be met to make this point valid:
1: The person sets a reply-to different than his current address.
2: The person reading wants to reply.
3: The person replying wants to do so privately.
In mailing lists most messages are sent by people from their current and
valid address, are read by a vast majority of people but never replied to by
them, and when a reply is made it is, more often than not by an order of at
least a magnitude, to the list and not to the individual.
Let's compare that to the alternative, no reply-to set and people not
culling the To/CC field.
Steve Lamb <morpheus@calweb.com>
Scott Ellis <storm@gate.net>
Nathan E Norman <finn@midco.net>
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com>
M.C. Vernon <mcv21@cam.ac.uk>
Hamish Moffatt <hamish@rising.com.au>
Bill Leach
Those are the names of all the people that I have replied to in the
course of the "dselect oddities" thread. If I had not culled the list, if
others on that list had not culled the list, we would be sending out 7 copies
of each message. 1 to the list and 6 to people on the above list (which
numbers 7, the 6 comes from a message not going to the sender).
Remember, that thread was fairly self-contained. I've been in
discussions on lists that would involve 20-30 members from the list. That is
20-30 copies of each message by the end.
Now, which is more common? People wanting private replies from a public
list going to a different account than the one they use, or people not
culling the to/cc list? Which causes the most damage?
Not culling the to/cc list.
That issue was not addressed at all in that page.
--
Steve C. Lamb | Opinions expressed by me are not my
http://www.calweb.com/~morpheus | employer's. They hired me for my
ICQ: 5107343 | skills and labor, not my opinions!
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