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Laird Breyer | 1 Oct 04:13
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Re: reply etiquette


On Sep 29 2004, Keith Moore wrote:

> it's very simple.  if  you reply in a public forum to a message that 
> someone sent, it's common courtesy to send the author of the original 
> message a copy of the reply.
> 
> for a variety of reasons, merely sending the message to the public 
> forum is not sufficient, unless the author has explicitly indicated 
> that this is sufficient.

I'm not sure if this was discussed in the big reply-to thread of the
past few weeks, but it seems to me that what you're asking for is
properly the mailing list software's job.

Individual list members are in no position to predict the preferences
of other list members, but the mailing list knows who's who, and 
can accept (or should accept, I think) preferences as easily as the normal
subscribe/unsubscribe commands.

Here's how a mailing list server could behave to accomodate everybody
(I don't know if some servers do this, but I would not be surprised) 

-----

From the point of view of a subscribed list member, the server should
offer a command to select preferences such as:

1) for general incoming list messages, whether to trim extraneous
mailboxes from the various destination fields, keeping only the list
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Martin Trautmann | 1 Oct 13:07
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non-member messages to lists (was Re: reply etiquette)


On 2004-10-01 12:13, Laird Breyer wrote:
> From the point of view of a non-member of the list, who just wants to
> send a single message without subscribing, the list server can have the
> following default behaviour:
> 
> 1) if a new list message is a direct reply to the non-member's email, it
> should be forwarded to his address, possibly with instructions on
> how to disable this feature if he wishes.

I did not understand this option.

First of all, is the non-member's email to the list accepted or refused?
You assume that it is always accepted, since otherwise nobody could reply
to him!?

The first default behavior on acceptin a non-member's email could be
1) ignore
2) refuse
3) return some handling instructions
4) let the message be administrated
5) accept by reply handling
6) accept by spam filtering
7) accept everything

1), just ignore should be discouraged

2) refuse is very reasonable and a default behavior on most lists

3) handling instructions is part of a refuse message, most of the time.
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Arnt Gulbrandsen | 1 Oct 13:37
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Re: reply etiquette


Bruce Lilly writes:
> Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
>
>>  Don't google. Tell me: Is kde <at> freebsd.org a list or not?
>
> One cannot tell from the name alone.

Agreed.

> If you insist on a guess, I'd guess that it probably expands to at 
> least one list, since
> both KDE and FreeBSD are open source projects with multiple participants.

I don't insist on a guess. But I have the impression that some 
participants of this discussion insisti that the sender guess and 
insert mail-followup-to based on the guess.

Arnt
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Laird Breyer | 1 Oct 14:26
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Re: non-member messages to lists (was Re: reply etiquette)


Martin,

Thanks for the list of cases. I realize that when I wrote the comment
earlier, I formulated things clumsily, so I'd like to restate things
more precisely (hopefully) instead of replying to your points directly.
I can reply more directly in another comment if necessary. 

I am not directly trying to propose policies for membership posting
rights in a mailing list. I'll explain the issue I see, and why I
think the list server should be responsible for solving it.

The main issue I see is that some people like the following custom

1) always post messages only to the list address.

While others prefer the custom

2) always post messages to the list address and the parent poster.

Variations are possible, but the "culture clash" is simplest with 1) and 2).

What is the culture clash? It appears that people who favour 1) do so
because they don't want to see duplicate messages in their MUA
systems.  [I myself favour 1)] From what I understand, it appears to
me that people who favour 2) want to receive personal copies so that
they don't inadvertently miss a reply to one of their own posts.

So as a mental picture, we could say that people who favour 1) are
happy to browse mailing lists and monitor all threads equally at their
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Martin Trautmann | 1 Oct 16:07
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Re: non-member messages to lists (was Re: reply etiquette)


On 2004-10-01 22:26, Laird Breyer wrote:
> 
> Martin,
> 
> Thanks for the list of cases. I realize that when I wrote the comment
> earlier, I formulated things clumsily, so I'd like to restate things
> more precisely (hopefully) instead of replying to your points directly.
> I can reply more directly in another comment if necessary. 

Hi Laird,

thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately, I changed the subject since I
felt the topic was related to non-members.

Since I don't want to change the topic now again, let's live with this
topic above for some while. Maybe the discussion will be on non-members,
too :-/  

Ok, general topic 'list replies', here we go...

> The main issue I see is that some people like the following custom
> 
> 1) always post messages only to the list address.

> What is the culture clash? It appears that people who favour 1) do so
> because they don't want to see duplicate messages in their MUA
> systems.  [I myself favour 1)] From what I understand, it appears to
> me that people who favour 2) want to receive personal copies so that
> they don't inadvertently miss a reply to one of their own posts.
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Martin Trautmann | 1 Oct 16:21
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Re: non-member messages to lists (was Re: reply etiquette)


On 2004-10-01 22:26, Laird Breyer wrote:
> What is the culture clash? 

Since we moved slightly (?) offtopic here:

yet a perfectly different question for cultural differences is the kind of
'salutation'. I suppose there are major differences here from country to
country, which may result in even more confusion as long as you don't know
about the cultural differences elsewhere.

Here in Germany it would be considered impolite NOT to start a letter with
a greeting and NOT to end it with some kind of complimentary close.

Formal letters most of the times start with
"Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren" (Dear ladies and sirs) and end with
"Mit freundlichen Grüßen" (With kind regards; Sincerely yours).

Private letters start e.g. with
"Lieber <name>" (Dear <name>) and end e.g. with
"Viele Grüße" (greetings).

Germans tend to use those, and comparable translations in English writing
as well - and maybe the receiver wonders about. I was told that any kind
of greeting in the states may be accepted as some kind of very formal
attitude. Thus the reader will feel more distracted/distanced here?

On the other hand someone in Germany may feel weird if any stranger would
send him an letter and sign this with 'Love, ..."
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Bruce Lilly | 1 Oct 03:57
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Re: Understanding response protocols


Keith Moore wrote:
> 
> Traditionally, with a meatspace meeting room, you were
> either inside the room (and participating in the meeting) or you were
> not. [ ...]
> Including someone outside the room in a discussion that was going on
> inside the room was generally infeasible without special arrangements. 

Some minor nits: it is not unheard of for individuals to participate
in meetings via written correspondence (I'm thinking of paper, but it
works now with electronic communications also) or via telephone.
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Bruce Lilly | 1 Oct 03:53
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Re: Understanding response protocols


Charles Lindsey wrote:
> In <4159F346.9030204 <at> erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly <at> erols.com> writes:

>>Try RFCs 1958 and 2277, paying attention to the difference between
>>protocol elements and text.
> 
> Yes, using "LIST" a keyword in group syntax is not the most perfect
> solution, but then we are not living in a perfect world.
[...]
> I don't think we are in a position seriously to consider new syntax for
> To:, Cc: and Reply-To.

Then why have you proposed such a change -- that's exactly what changing
non-protocol text to "a keyword" would do?

> I have proposed a solution that could work.

No, you've proposed fundamentally changing fields in a way that is extremely
unlikely to work; a way that depends on guesswork, a way that invites
confusion and ambiguity. And it does noting at all to address the
fundamental issues, viz. that an author needs to provide a clear indication
of where he wishes responses to be sent.
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Bruce Lilly | 1 Oct 03:01
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Re: Understanding response protocols


Charles Lindsey wrote:
> In <4159F9EC.3020603 <at> erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly <at> erols.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Charles Lindsey wrote:
> 
> 
>>>The only place where it is known that a crosspost is occurring is at the
>>>original sender.
> 
> 
>>Not true, on at least two counts:
> 
> 
>>1. an author might not know that a particular mailbox expands to a list.
> 
> 
> Sure, the author might not know [...]

So you agree that your original statement was untrue.

> But for sure if the author is not aware of it, then agents further
> down the chain will be even less aware of it.

That's obviously wrong; clearly a downstream list expander (or
its maintainer) is aware that list expansion is taking place.

> Hence the original sender is that latest point
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D. J. Bernstein | 1 Oct 22:04
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Re: Understanding response protocols


Bruce Lilly writes:
> It appears that MFT proponents cannot agree what it is supposed to do

In fact, all of us are in perfect agreement as to what Mail-Followup-To
does: it replaces To etc. as the default followup target, in exactly the
same way that Reply-To replaces From as the default reply target.

Comments such as ``In this case, Mail-Followup-To includes both of the
crossposted lists'' are simply _examples_ of how senders commonly use
and benefit from Mail-Followup-To. They don't change the _meaning_ of
the field. The Mail-Followup-To field always means the same thing: it
replaces To etc. as the default followup target. Nothing more, nothing
less.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
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