Despite my previous misreading, John Conover had actually written this:
| I think this could be done with a smartlist mailing list, such that a
| mail is sent to the distribution list, and is saved, and forwarded to
| the first person in the routing list, and when he/she/it replies, it
| goes back to the mailing list, where it is saved, and sent to the
| second person in the routing list, etc. Has anyone done this already?
I didn't catch the part about "when the first person replies"; sorry.
So let me make sure I understand now:
Someone writes to the alias. The letter goes ONLY to the first name on the
list. That person's reply goes not to the originator of the memo but to an
archive and to the second person on the list, and the second person's reply
goes only to the archive and to the third person on the list. Eventually,
the response from the last person on the list, if he or she writes one, will
be stored in the thread archive but not delivered to any other person's email.
If anyone along the way doesn't reply, does the chain break? If anyone along
the way trims the original letter or earlier responses out of his or her out-
going reply, do the lower people on the list never see them in email but have
to search the archive if they're interested? John said that each response is
"saved" but saved where? Somewhere world-readable or group-readable so that
everyone on the list can, if he or she takes action, read the entire exchange?
This question was easier to answer when I didn't understand it. The part I
missed on first reading exposed a whole bunch of omitted details.
And I still have no idea of what John is really trying to accomplish, such
as why a simple mailing list that sends everything to everyone on it (and
possibly also archives list activity), for example, won't do the job.