On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 09:10:22 -0500, James Knott wrote:
However, having said that, I find the reply to OP default to be irritating. I'm in a few other mail lists and web site forums and also read newsgroups. In addition to that, in the past I also participated in the old BBS and Compuserve forums. In each and every one of those, the default has always been to reply to the group as a whole and to the OP as the exception. For some idiotic reason, this list does the opposite. And yes I have read the stated sources and failed to find a satifactory reason for this policy.
Oh boy. Another flame war. People feel pretty strongly about this as well. It happens, though, that on this, I agree with you. As I understand it, the rationalization refers to RFCs which clearly don't envision mailing lists. And those who argue in favor of leaving the default reply to the original poster cite these RFCs. But the RFCs don't envision mailing lists. The RFCs simply talk about how replies should be directed to whom you're replying to. As if the person you're replying to is always the "original poster". I would argue, and here comes the flame war, that if we view the mailing list as a sender, rather than as a relaying SMTP daemon, then replies should quite properly be directed to the list and that this would fulfill the intent of the RFCs. -- David Benfell, LCP benfell@parts-unknown.org --- Resume available at http://www.parts-unknown.org/resume.html