I have been replying to vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com.  my replies seem to get
thru, as far as I can tell.  but, maybe that's why I'm often ignored......
:0

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 1:42 PM, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:

> At 01:11 PM 6/4/2011, Jonathan Edwards wrote:
>
>> One question off topic - when replying to this list, what is standard
>> protocol - "reply-all" - seems like then the person who posted last get's
>> two copies - one to them and one to the list (which also goes to them)
>>
>
> I personally encourage public replies to most queries; otherwise
> nobody knows whether a question's been taken care of.  In my personal
> capacity my ratio of public to private replies is probably 5:1 or
> better.  I may make both public and private replies to a query,
> either in parallel or mixed in a thread.  Usually the private ones
> are either because of an existing relationship or to avoid what I see
> as a potential for embarrassing someone.*
>
> Reply-All is the easy way to do that, and yes, unless gmail is
> deciding what's best for you <grrr>** you'll get two copies if
> someone answers your post that way.  Some people find that
> annoying.  Personally, before gmail started swiping them out from
> under me I found it a valuable way to be reminded whether I'd gotten
> a public or private reply.
>
> There's an alternate view that most replies should be private to
> avoid cluttering up the list.  I disagree quite firmly with that viewpoint.
>
> *In our moderating Ben and I started mostly private but found that
> for this list mostly public seems to work better.
>
> **For possible interest - I use gmail as a portable mail-caching
> system.  My attglobal address forwards to gmail.  I can download from
> their POP servers and send mail through their SMTP servers from
> anywhere in the known universe.  I never visit the website except to
> look in my spam folder, and I never ever see one of their ads.  I use
> Eudora for mail, but it would work just as well with Outlook or
> Thunderbird or whatever.
>
> Three little snags: their spam filtering is a bit too aggressive,
> they make decisions on my behalf about duplicate messages that I wish
> they wouldn't (another example: since my messages to the list go out
> through them, they suppress the incoming copy so I had to SET VANAGON
> VERIFY on the listserv to be sure that my priceless gems actually
> make it to the list), and their outgoing servers put headers on my
> mail such that some replies will be addressed to the gmail address
> instead of the attglobal one.  In compensation it lets me deal with a
> large volume of email (several hundred a day from around thirty
> mailing lists/yahoo groups), get and send mail on my laptop from
> anywhere without losing concurrency, and be away from access for long
> periods if necessary without worries about overflowing my ISP's
> mailbox allowance.
>
> Yours,
> d mod
>

--
Alan Felder
Austin TX
82 Diesel Westy