On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Chris Jones <cjns1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 04:21:40AM EDT, Terence wrote:
>> 2009/10/13 Dave Sherohman <d...@sherohman.org>:
>
>> > The position I was trying to explain in my earlier message was that,
>> > even though 99% of replies to mailing list messages are intended to
>> > go to the list, directing an intended-private message to the list
>> > causes over 100 times more harm than a message intended for the list
>> > being inadvertently made private. The Debian list policy is,
>> > therefore, reasonable, because it minimizes the overall total harm
>> > caused by misdirected messages.
>> >
>> <cut>
>> >
>>
>> Well said. I think that about covers it.
Not quite.
>
> +1
>
> I have personally experienced the embarrassment of such situations on a
> couple of occasions, and counted my blessings that there was nothing
> sensitive in these messages.
This is an excellent example of why there should not be a globally
defined policy denying the utility of potentially useful features.
While this poster has _personal_ experience that influences his
preferences, others may have a different experiential context, and
thus have a diferent preference.
If Reply-To is available then users are able to exercise choice is
using it or not. If Reply-To is not available due to some Ex-Cathedra
policy decision then user's choices are eliminated.
I suggest that it is not the place authors of mail readers nor of
mailing list administrators to make user's choices for them, or worse,
prohibit them from exercising choice at all.
Consider an email UI that offered the following choices:
- reply to sender (only)
- reply to list (only)
- reply to all
This would appear to make it possible for the user to establish a
default preference and selectively override it as necessary.
If such a UI were commonly available, how would that hurt the
community of mailing list members?
-- Lee
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