On Sun, 26 Oct 1997 22:19:52 +0200 (EET),
era eriksson <era(_at_)iki(_dot_)fi> writes:
[...]
You are addressing this only from the private recipient's point of
view. I would imagine that a discussion about the +general+
desirability of list Cc:s might be of some interest. I find myself
wondering about the "extra" traffic I generate, but usually tell
myself that if I don't copy the list, other subscribers will be
generating at least the same amount of "extra" traffic when they
respond to the same question, perhaps each of them in private, perhaps
even weeks after the question was originally asked.
[...]
IMHO there should never be any discouragement of Cc:s to the list.
If duplicate copies are a problem for some people then the private
copies should be the ones to go - and I agree w/ David Tamkin here.
It should be the responsibilty of the individual to conform to the
lists needs, not vice versa. But that's not even the point.
I have been subscribed since early January, and have only posted
to the list a handful of times. I got the needed help in those
instances; but even more importantly, I've gotten innumerable
tips just from lurking. I read the list every day, keep my own
tips file culled from the list, and archive every message. My
.procmailrc file has changed numerous times as a result of
something I read here. The value to the lurkers of information
posted to the list is great. Hell, I even enjoy the flames.
The mailing list should be the primary place for posting responses
to questions asked there, because more people than just the
respondents are listening and learning. I thought that was what
a mail list was all about.
BTW, I'm one of those people with an old MUA: /bin/mail. I have no
access to 'Reply-To:', but then again, I RTFM (besides reading here)
and filter duplicates. ;-) Although one of my shell accounts has
an old version of formail that doesn't understand '-D' and I can't
use the recipe there, I consider that to be my problem. And since
I know era reads the list, I'm just going to manually trim him from
the 'To:' line with my old software.
Just my $.02
- Don