[Dialogue] Apology for clogging up the list serve with personal messages . . .

[Tim Wegner]

Normally I don't like to discuss list mechanics in the list itself, 
but I'll make an exception because maybe we can improve things.

Jim asked:

> Jim Wiegel here. Is there a way to send replies back to the person 
> vs. the whole list? Whenever I click reply it seems to want to reply 
> twice, but only to the whole list, not the individual. 
> 
> Is this a list serve setting or something in my email?? 

The answer is: both. It's not too hard to edit the "to:" line in your 
reply 
to exclude the list. The details depend on your email program.

BUT - this is also a list setting that I can change. Against the 
recommendation of the mailman software we are using, I have set the 
default action of "reply" to reply to the list, rather than just the 
poster. I set it that way because I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) 
that that was the software behavior that most people wanted. I would 
be most happy to change this behavior if it's the consensus, or maybe 
just try for a while as an experiment.

If I make this change, it will be a little harder to keep the thread 
going by replying to the list, and a little easier to reply to just 
the person.

OK, I just made an executive decision. Starting ... now replies will 
go to the poster and not the list. So if you want the reply to go to 
the list (for example a reply to this posting) you have to make sure 
the list address appears in the address field of your email. I will 
change things back Thursday unless people prefer the new way. Note 
that (for the moment) I ONLY changed the dialogue list - the OE and 
springboard lists still default to the whole list.

The effect of this change will be to minimize those postings that 
were meant to go to the person but went to the whole list by mistake, 
at the expense of making it harder to post to the list.

If you have opinions on this please email me privately, though a 
brief discussion here on this topic is probably OK.

Tim