On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 01:09:22PM EDT, Lee Winter wrote: [..]
> This is an excellent example of why there should not be a globally > defined policy denying the utility of potentially useful features. No global policy..? Sounds like an oxymoron to me. What do you recommend? A policy that is user-specific is not a policy. > While this poster has _personal_ experience that influences his > preferences, others may have a different experiential context, and > thus have a diferent preference. Nothing _personal_ about it. Dave Sherohman posted a crystal-clear explanation - not once, mind you, he had to do it twice - of why what you call a "useful feature" is a nasty trap. Does he have to post it a third time? > 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. Feel free to set up your own debian-user-II mailing list where you will have all latitude to have some user committee define the policy. Good luck. > 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. Do you mean that when he/she susbscribes, the user also fill out a form defining his personal technical "choices" of how the list should be implemented? When you set up an internet connection, are you given the option of specifying the "useful features" that you would prefer to implement in lieu of the IP standard? > Consider an email UI that offered the following choices: > - reply to sender (only) > - reply to list (only) > - reply to all Consider _not_ using any mailer that does not offer these choices, period. And make sure you tell your friends about it. > 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? Not sure what you mean by "commonly available" .. but mutt certainly gives you all three options. The crux of this issue is that as usual the M$ MUA does not do things right and as a result a slew of mailing list providers started messing up their headers to accomadate _them_ And a host of so-called GNU/linux MUA's followed suit. Two wrongs don't make a right. CJ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
