The new linux-il - a few tips to get you (re)started

[Shachar Shemesh]

Micha Feigin wrote:
>
> At least the behaviour with claws mail at the moment, reply to list correctly
> recognizes linux-il which is good. Previously I've sent private mails instead
> of list mails a lot of times because I'm used to using reply to list for all
> others and I don't remember to switch.
>   
We are digressing into discussion about ethics, but here goes.

Personally, I think "reply to all" is the right thing to do in most 
situations. Replying to a narrower group, especially if done without 
thinking, is simply impolite. You email me and send a CC to someone 
else, this is, presumably, because you wanted this someone else to be a 
side to the discussion. If I hit "reply", I'm sending the message that 
says "I don't care who you thought should be included, I'm only replying 
to you".

If I get a personal email with CCs, my default action is "reply to all" 
(unless this is "friendly spam" or other cases where I have reason to 
believe they were added to the discussion against their will). When I 
send an email to someone with a CC to someone else, I find it offensive 
when people reply only to me, and I try to hint to that effect by 
re-adding the CC when I reply (most people don't get the hint). To me, 
this is just common curtsy.

And yet, email clients go to greater and greater length to make just 
such rude behavior easier and easier, and people take pride in the fact 
that they do it. Go figure.

I could understand the use for "reply to list" when some people would 
get double the emails against their wishes. This, however, is no longer 
an issue with most modern mailing list managers.

Here is the situation as I see it:
Reply to all: You respect each individual's preferences regarding how 
many copies they want to receive.
Reply: You want to send a private reply, only to the sender (impossible 
when the list has "reply to list")
And the non-standard buttons
Reply to sender: Only makes sense in order to override lists with the 
broken "reply to list" header.
Reply to list: You force people like me to get only one copy against my 
wish, and you are proud of it.

To me, it seems obvious that the polite thing to do, especially on a 
list that has no-dupes support, is to do "reply to all" by default. 
Since I think this is the right default for private communication as 
well for the reasons stated above, I don't see a problem. I am, however, 
open to the possibility that I'm wrong, if anyone wishes to enlighten me.
> At least with claws mail, in addition to the list, if you have a reply to
> address it also adds that to the cc field, don't know if others do the same.
>   
Yes, that's precisely what "reply to all" does. Put the original sender 
in the "to" and everyone else in the "cc".
> On the other hand, I've noticed that there are two from fields at the moment,
> one of the original poster and the other:
> >From linux-il-bounces at cs.huji.ac.il Wed Jan 28 18:04:20 2009
>   
First, I didn't see that. Second, what you quote is not a header. An 
SMTP header has a colon (:) between header and data. What you are 
quoting is the SMTP MTAs log line, and is ignored by any sane mail client.

Shachar