Greetings everyone.
I've tried to remain out of this debate and see how things go, but I felt I
should add my comments and observations.
As various people have mentioned, this forum is now operating like all the
other mail groups that I've experienced. In fact when I first tried to reply
to a posting, I was caught by the 'quaint' reply scheme! However, it would
appear that unlike most of those groups I've been involved with, there are a
lot of public postings where people would prefer to send private replies. Most
groups I've been subscribed to have had mainly public replies.
Then again, on my mail client, I use "reply" to reply to the group and "reply
to all" to reply to the sender (deleting the group address) or the sender and
the group. This will, of course, also work if the group reverts to its former
operation (if the mailgroup software that operated this way is still loaded
onto the server).
Out of curiousity, I looked at the Majordomo (a fairly common maillist server)
FAQ, which had this to say on Reply-to:
Whether you should have a "Reply-To:" or not depends on the charter of your
list and the nature of its users. If the list is a discussion list and you
generally want replies to go back to the list, you can include one. Some people
don't like being told what to do, and prefer to be able to choose whether to
send a private reply or a reply to the list just by using the right function on
their mail agent. Take note that if you do use a "Reply-To:", then some mail
agents make it much harder for a person on the list to send a private reply.
mail loops if any of the members of your list are running fairly-common but
broken software which doesn't know what an envelope address is. (Many Microsoft
products, as well as many other PC-based non-SMTP/Internet mail systems which
work through an SMTP gateway.)
Regards
Chris Cameron
Quoting Frank Mycroft <frankm@clara.net>:
> 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>
> >
>
> > The Europa Forum is supported by Aviators Network UK
> <info@avnet.co.uk>
> >
> >
>
>
>
> ___________________________
> ____________________________________________
> The Europa Forum is supported by Aviators Network UK
> <info@avnet.co.uk>
>
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