On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, Gavin Scott wrote:

> Tracy writes:
> > Maybe what I'm trying to say is if you're going to reply to the list,
> > people should take the trouble to delete the originator off of
> > distribution (since he's going to get it anyway as a subscriber).
>
> Yes, but you don't know whether the person will get the "list" response
> in a timely manner.  They may be getting the list in digest mode, or
> they may be posting via the comp.sys.hp.mpe newsgroup.

To me that seems part of the price of subscribing to a list.  Obviously,
this message isn't an emergency, and one wouldn't care less if it is
timely or not (and it will probably reappear again a week from now anyway
from USENET.)

If this WAS an emergency, I would care most certainly on speedy delivery
and wouldn't mind the double receipt.

> When I reply to a posting, I'll either reply to the sender only, the list
> only, or both.

Sounds obvious to me.  Not much else besides Cc: addresees is there?
Either a), b), c) or d) all the above.  :-)

>In more than half of the cases I reply only to the poster,

Actually due to the frequency of double messages I get, I suspect that
"less" than half the messages generated go only to the poster (although
I'm not talking about you, I mean the list members in general.)  This is
the source of my original complaint.  It seems the answer lies in
individual habits during the course how a person replies to a message,
which goes back to my first paragraph above.  It seems that many list
members do not have as good habits in this regard (or are simply ignorant
of what happens to their message) as you or I.

[snip]

> People with "nospam" garbage...[snip]

> Messages in HTML format...[snip]

> Messages that assume a right margin greater than...[snip]

> Messages which quote the entire original...[snip]

None of the 4 statements have any bearing on my original statment.

The Reply-To question dealt with the list-server and how messages are
originated.  It was irrespective of which e-mail client anyone uses,
because it stands to reason if fewer messages are originated to begin
with, then fewer messages have to be filtered or deleted in the end.

My complaint however was quite satisfactorily answered earlier in the day
by Wirt, who simply stated:

"Several years ago, the list was set up this way, but it was changed by
consensus because too many personal replies that were meant only to be
sent to the originator of the message were going out to the list as a
whole."

Having my question answered by history, it is no longer a problem for me.

Tracy Johnson
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