[ntp:questions] How do you reply to list postings

Chuck Swiger cswiger at mac.com
Tue Feb 7 19:24:35 UTC 2012


On Feb 7, 2012, at 11:07 AM, Ron Frazier (NTP) wrote:
> Thanks to Dave and Chuck for the quick replies.  Just FYI, most of the other lists I'm on use the public list address if you hit reply.  Doesn't matter, I can work with it either way.

While it is a matter of some debate, changing the reply-to field to be a list address rather than the original poster is considered harmful.  Good mailing list software, such as GNU Mailman (IMO), allow users to adjust their preferences so that using "reply all" works reasonably well for people and list communities which prefer either custom.

[ At least at one point-- I learned Usenet and mailing list etiquette back in the 1980's, FWIW, and I recall the transition from Bitnet and UUCP bang-paths to SMTP and NNTP-- folks were expected to decide whether to reply privately or to the whole list, which is where the distinction between "reply" and "reply all" in mail user-agents originally came from.  Folks who find that sort of thing interested might take a look at http://js.home.xs4all.nl/gnksa/ and references like RFC-1036... ]

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck



More information about the questions mailing list