Tom,

"Reply" and "reply all" are not too difficult to figure out, nor to use, so
long as you force yourself slow down by about a nanosecond.

I much prefer having the option of replying privately to a post.  Sometimes
this is a convenience.  Sometimes it saves the person to whom I am writing
some embarrassment.  If I post a widget for sale, there's no reason for the
whole list to see the responses I receive (and in some instances, I may not
want the whole list to see them).

I am a member of several other lists which are not structured to allow
p-mail, and on them I am not nearly as active.
Karl Wolz

----- Original Message -----
From: "DaveC" <voicebox@DNAI.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 8:52 AM
Subject: ** PLEASE READ ** Change the List's Reply-To address

> Hello,
> OK, I just gotta say something, here.
>
> For most posts I send to the List, I'm getting multiple "replies"
> sent to me rather than the List. (Due to the wording of these
> messages, I'm sure they were meant to go to the List, not to me
> directly.) I'm sure that I'm not the only one who gets "public"
> messages sent to them rather than to the List.
>
> In fairness to those persons from whom I received messages, I, too,
> mistakenly sent posts to members that I meant to send to the List. In
> all, a 80% error rate! I know it's a small sample, but geees! How
> many others on the list mistakenly have sent or received messages
> that were meant to be posted to the List? Quite a few, I'd bet.
>
> And here's the reason why:
>
> The Reply-To address for this List is set to be the individual
> poster's address, not the List address.
>
> So, whenever a person selects Reply from their e-mail program (as we
> all know), the message is not addressed to the List, but to the
> individual who posted the message. To avoid erroneously sending posts
> to individuals, each poster must manually change the Reply-To address
> for every reply.
>
> This mis-direction of messages is something that, if one applies
> oneself, he/she could overcome this problem. But who wants to have to
> try to remember this each and every time he/she composes a message to
> the VANAGON list? And then you've always got the newcomers who don't
> expect this to be this way (all other lists I belong to have the LIST
> address as the reply-to address).
>
> The current process of replying to List postings is tedious and
> error-prone. I suggest that the Reply-To address be changed to <
> vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM >.
>
> I am a member of several lists, and this is the only one that doesn't
> have a Reply-To address that is the List address.
>
> I assume that the reason the Reply-To address is set to be the
> individual poster's address is to avoid replies being posted to the
> List that are meant to be private. But think about this: how many
> times do you send a message to an individual list member, and how
> many times do you post to the List? In other words, the number of
> time you might mean to send a private message to a list member and
> mistakenly post it to the List has a *much* less chance of happening
> than the opposite occurring (simply because we post to the list more
> often than we reply privately to list members).
>
> Sincerely,
> Dave Carpenter
> --
> Dave Carpenter
>
> Whatever you wish for me,
> May you have twice as much.