Dear Rowland
Yes, I know this will go to the forum, possibly along with 449 others, but
because most of us haven't mentioned our preferences before you can't assume
we are 'a few'! Only a very few of the subscribers to the forum are on my
personal address book, and most of the people one might wish to reply to
never will be. I find it much easier to remember how to send a message to
the forum (a single address, which is in my address book), than to any one
of 450 subscribers, for whom , to me, the easy answer is to click the
'Reply to' button, when we can read the mail we are replying to as we write.
I don't care what other forums (?fora?) do, lets do what most of us think is
best.
Cheers
Frank
----- Original Message -----
From: "Europa Club Membership Secretary" <europa-club@rowil.clara.net>
Subject: forum settings
> I've let John Cliff handle most of the recent comments about how the
> list is configured, and I hope I'm not treading on his toes by
> mentioning the following points.
>
> The Europa Forum is intended for messages likely to be of general
> interest to _all_ Europa people. It has never purported to be a
> substitute for the maintenance of a personal e-mail address book of
> one's regular correspondents.
>
> It is configured in the same way as pretty much all the other e-mail
> lists around - that is, the default is to reply to the list. On none
> of the many discussion-style e-mail lists that I subscribe to (about
> 7 at present I think - I usually read {except for the spam} and deal
> with about 100 e-mail messages per day) have I seen any requests by
> users for a "reply-to-sender" default.
>
> When the Europa list was first set up, it conformed to the standard
> model, and I cannot recall a single complaint about it in the early
> years. It's very unfortunate that because of the limitations of
> out-of-date server software at Aviators Network, the list was then
> re-configured in a non-standard way, leading to the formation of
> inappropriate habits by users over some years.
>
> I'm sorry that for a few of the 450-odd subscribers to the list, the
> recent changes have been uncomfortable, and we hope that things will
> seem less awkward as familiarity grows. For those who are using an
> e-mail system provided by their employer and have little control over
> its configuration, perhaps you should consider moving recreational
> activities to a home computer where you can choose what to install.
> It's hard to envisage exactly how any modification will be received
> by all those affected, but we believe we have (in time stolen from
> Europa-building) set things up to give the greatest benefit to the
> majority, while minimising future maintenance requirements. (Of
> course if there are 450 replies to this post all disagreeing, it
> might be necessary to reconsider!)
>
> We also remember that perhaps one day eager volunteers will arise,
> offering to take over the administrative tasks we currently perform
> for the Club, and we are trying to leave the shop as clean and tidy
> as possible for those new incumbents.
>
> As for a separate list for fliers only, I hope that does not happen,
> personally wish to know about all aspects of the Europa experience.
> If people get into the habit of prefixing their flying-topic message
> subject lines with "flying" then anyone who wants to see only those
> posts can arrange a filter (or message handler) to bin all the rest -
> and those who are not interested in flying (what!) can do the
> reverse. Of course, some messages impinge on both building and
> flying, so I cannot be sure what to recommend in that case as one or
> other of the filters mentioned above would not work as desired ....
> but certainly choosing informative subject lines is a great help to
> all users.
>
> regards
>
> Rowland
>
> | Rowland Carson Europa Club Membership Secretary
> | Europa 435 G-ROWI PFA #16532 EAA #168386
> | e-mail <memsec@europaclub.org.uk> website <www.europaclub.org.uk>
>
>
|