procmail
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: On discouraging direct replies

1997-10-26 03:50:11
On Sat, 25 Oct 1997 16:53:53 -0700, "Alan K. Stebbens"
<aks(_at_)anywhere(_dot_)engr(_dot_)sgi(_dot_)com> wrote:
I've observed that some people favor replies to the list, even for
trivial answers, usually for the sake of appearances.  That is, by

I've customarily sent replies to the list simply because it tells the
others on the list that this particular question has hopefully been
dealt with; it also saves the real recipient from the occasional
inaccuracies and omissions I am bound to make in my replies, because
then the other folks on the list can follow up with corrections. 

This is unlike the culture on some other lists I'm on, but I've gotten
the feeling that several others on this list are reasoning the same
way. I like to think this is something I "learned" on this list,
rather than something I just made up, but it is hard to reconstruct
this.

Anyhow, one way or the other, this is obviously something that could
rather easily be decided by some sort of majority vote or whatever. I
think it would make a lot of sense to set up some sort of policy, even
if (in today's climate on this list :-/ it is not obvious that all the
list regulars are going to be able to agree on it. Still, it's worth a
shot, and better than everyone inventing their own standard. And as
things look now, we'd better get used to some self-policing, because
there is no list mom actively taking care of us. (It would be nice if
the volunteer effort could take off, but it appears that Stephen is
too busy or something.)

/* era */

(And no, I'm not volunteering to take votes on this particular issue
at this point. We could hopefully reach a reasonable consensus without
voting.)

-- 
 Paparazzi of the Net: No matter what you do to protect your privacy,
  they'll hunt you down and spam you. <http://www.iki.fi/~era/spam/>