[Fwd: Re: Cob Land URLS for the MidWest]

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Sun, 25 Apr 1999, Sojourner wrote:

> I think this also was meant for the list.
> 
> Does anybody have any idea why I keep getting e-mails that I'm pretty
> sure were intended for the list addressed to me privately?  My reply-to
> (which can sometimes override the list reply-to, depending on how the
> list is set up) is not set.
> 
> Any clue?
> 
> Holly ;-D

The coblist is setup so that for most mail programs, the default reply
goes to the person who sent the message to the list, and a "reply to all"
for most mail programs should result in an additional copy of the
message being sent to the list as well.  The list was changed to this
setup a while back because we were getting to many messages on the list
that were off topic, private conversations (or should have been) because
people were not taking the time to think about where their replies should 
be sent to.

The disadvantage of this setup is as you have seen, if people don't pay
attention to how they reply, a message which should have been sent to the
list only goes to the person who sent the original message.  It's an easy
mistake to make, I've done it myself once or twice, but it did pretty
much cure the problem with excessive off topic postings.


Shannon C. Dealy      |                    DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |               - Custom Software Development -
                      |         Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
                      |      Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
                      |                       www.deatech.com