On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 08:18:14PM -0600, Joseph A Nagy Jr wrote: > Dave Sherohman wrote: > >I disagree. Replies should go where the person sending the reply > >wants them to go, with consideration for any request which may be > >made by the poster of the message being replied to. Say, for > > I disagree to the first and agree with the latter. First, part of the > OSS movement (as I see it) is the sharing of knowledge. What good is a > mailing list if knowledge isn't shared with the community.
An offlist reply does not necessarily mean that knowledge isn't being shared. I've already given two examples of this: Comments on a poster's .sig and organizing a side project which is not directly related to the list. Not all replies to list messages are relevant to the list. I've even observed a handful of mildly embarrassing incidents where personal replies were unintentionally sent to lists. Then there is also the time-honored usenet practice of requesting that all replies be directed to the original poster, who will then post a summary of the replies at a later date. > If you're like me, you delete all discussions except the > ones you are truly interested in. This where the beautfy of mailing-list > archives come in. Someone's bound to remember that a similar problem > happened some time ago and can tell you so. No argument there. I just trust people to be able to judge for themselves which responses should be public and which should be private. It appears that you do not. > >instance, that you wanted to complain about my .sig - it may be a > >reply to a list posting, but it's completely off-topic and absolutely > >does not belong on the list. > > Secondly, I know how to copy someone's email (even if it means writing > it down with pencil and paper) and composing an email directly to you. > Those who don't are either stupid or lazy (or perhaps both). Don't forget that what I'm calling a Bad Idea here is the suggestion that the list manager remove sender addresses from list messages. If it does so, you can't copy someone's email address and send a direct reply because it is no longer present to be copied. > >>Also, disallow non-subscribers from posting. > >Again, I disagree. People who have problems with their debian > >systems should be able to obtain help without subjecting themselves > >to the hundreds of messages per day which are generated by this list. > > There is the digested version of this mailing list, and I'm sure you > could elect to totally not receive mail at all. I'm sure this would be > an easy feature to implement, if I knew how to code I'd help with such a > project. Digests reduce the number of messages received, but do not make it any easier to find the one or two replies to your question that may or may not exist within the hundreds of total posts to the list. (Actually, I suspect they would make it harder, since threading generally does not work with digests.) -- The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened. - Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
