In article <5dfrp6$6ii at mserv1.dl.ac.uk>, Claus Sternberg <cs at im.dtu.dk> wrote:
>At 11:40 07-02-97 -0400, Robert J. Palmer Jr. wrote:
>>>Hi Claus - I've been having some problems with the listserver as have
>>others (see below). Any idea what's going on?
>>Rob
>>>>Hi Paul - when I chose REPLY to any of the list mail, it goes out to the
>>sender of the original posting, not to the list. Also, I do not see the
>>replies on the list, i.e., I don't receive them as email from the list.
>>I've sent the message to Claus for his advice.
>>Hi Rob,
>>I am afraid that it is due (the reply problem) to biosci policy. They have
>this idea that all their newsgroups should be set up like that (i.e.
>follow-ups automatically go to the original sender rather than the group).
>I am not really sure why it is so.
This has been the standard for all Internet mailing lists for years,
but not for LISTSERV which came from the old BITNET world. This issue
has been debated for years but the bottom line is that people's time
is precious and the decision was made that the sender of a message
should make a conscious decision before he/she barrages everyone else
on a list with a message. The BITNET default was dumped years ago
because people would get every answer posted in reply to some obvious
question and it would annoy them. Learning to explicitly add the
address of the mailing list to your reply is not an onerous burden.
It is the least that people can do if they are going to broadcast
their opinion to everyone else on the list. This policy has also
saved countless people from making fools of themselves in public when
they sent what they thought was a private reply to everyone on the
mailing list by accident.
Sincerely,
Dave Kristofferson
BIOSCI/bionet Manager
biosci-help at net.bio.net
