Vice versa.  Reply goes to the sender. Reply All goes to the sender & the list.  That’s a feature.  It sometimes prevents embarrassment.

And thank you Bill.

Jim

> On Dec 6, 2016, at 11:47 PM, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> If you do a simple reply to a list message, it's sent to the list and then
> re-sent from the list to all active list subscribers.
> 
> If you do a Reply-All, another copy is sent from you directly to the author
> of the message you're replying to.
> 
> Yrs,
> d
> 
> On Wed, Dec 7, 2016 at 12:29 AM, Bill Glenn <idahobill@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Full disclosure, I'm no expert, but here's what I know about this
>> problem.
>> 1.  I first raised this issue of unreadable text back in December of
>> 2009.  I was told by a moderator that the problem was on my end, but I
>> know that not to be the case.
>> 
>> 2.  The block of random characters are not random at all.  These
>> characters are the result of messages being encoded with Base64
>> encoding.
>> 
>> 3.  You can convert Base64 encoding by copying and pasting the message
>> into a Base64 decoder such as this one:
>> https://www.opinionatedgeek.com/codecs/base64decoder
>> 
>> 4.  The Vanagon List, aka Gerry, operates in plain text only; it cannot
>> convert Base64 encoding to plain text, so these unreadable messages are
>> going into the archives just as they are: unreadable.
>> 
>> 5.  In digest mode Gerry compiles messages from the archives and sends
>> them out periodically as a group of messages.  If a message is
>> unreadable in the archives, it will be unreadable when you receive it in
>> digest mode.
>> 
>> 6.  If you are not receiving messages in digest mode, it is my
>> understanding that each individual message is relayed directly from the
>> sender to you, without going through Gerry.  For those of you who say
>> you have never experienced a problem, you are likely not receiving
>> messages in digest mode, and your email client is decoding the Base64
>> message and converting it to plain text.
>> 
>> 7.  The unfortunate aspect to all this, beside those of us in digest
>> mode being unable to easily read some messages (without manually
>> decoding them), is that the archives are being corrupted with messages
>> that also cannot be read without manually decoding them.  See for
>> yourself by going to the archives to peruse the messages:
>> http://gerry.vanagon.com/archives/vanagon.html
>> 
>> 8.  The solution is for everyone on the list to ensure that you are
>> sending messages in plain text, nothing else.  As I said, I'm no expert,
>> so I cannot tell you how to do this within all the various email
>> clients.
>> 
>> It was my hope back in 2009, and remains now, that someone acquainted
>> with the various email clients and the means by which one selects for
>> plain text, and/or the means by which the coding/decoding information is
>> contained in the email headers, could provide a tutorial for fixing this
>> problem.  I would if I could, but this is way outside my area of
>> expertise.
>>