[Blackpool] Building your own community

[MJ Hewitt]

Hi Eveyone -

This is probably obvious to most, but I thought it worth pointing out.

This mailing list does not enforce reply to list, and is set to reply 'to
sender', not 'to list', for reasons given below.

To aid collaboration on projects, replies should be sent 'to list' so that
everyone can see what is happening and join in if they want to.

Reasoning:-
The discussion below is taken from
 http://producingoss.com/en/mailing-lists.html


The Great Reply-to Debate

Earlier, in the section called “Avoid Private
Discussions”<http://producingoss.com/en/setting-tone.html#avoid-private-discussions>,
I stressed the importance of making sure discussions stay in public forums,
and talked about how active measures are sometimes needed to prevent
conversations from trailing off into private email threads; furthermore,
this chapter is all about setting up project communications software to do
as much of the work for you as possible. Therefore, if the mailing list
management software offers a way to automatically cause discussions to stay
on the list, you would think turning that feature on would be the obvious
choice.

Well, not quite. There is such a feature, but it has some pretty severe
disadvantages. The question of whether or not to use it is one of the
hottest debates in mailing list management—admittedly, not a controversy
that's likely to make the evening news in your city, but it can flare up
from time to time in free software projects. Below, I will describe the
feature, give the major arguments on both sides, and make the best
recommendation I can.

The feature itself is very simple: the mailing list software can, if you
wish, automatically set the Reply-to header on every post to redirect
replies to the mailing list. That is, no matter what the original sender
puts in the Reply-to header (or even if they don't include one at all), by
the time the list subscribers see the post, the header will contain the list
address:

Reply-to: discuss at lists.example.org

On its face, this seems like a good thing. Because virtually all mail
reading software pays attention to the Reply-to header, now when anyone
responds to a post, their response will be automatically addressed to the
entire list, not just to the sender of the message being responded to. Of
course, the responder can still manually change where the message goes, but
the important thing is that *by default* replies are directed to the list.
It's a perfect example of using technology to encourage collaboration.

Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages. The first is known as the *Can't
Find My Way Back Home* problem: sometimes the original sender will put their
"real" email address in the Reply-to field, because for one reason or
another they send email from a different address than where they receive it.
People who always read and send from the same location don't have this
problem, and may be surprised that it even exists. But for those who have
unusual email configurations, or who cannot control how the From address on
their mails looks (perhaps because they send from work and do not have any
influence over the IT department), using Reply-to may be the only way they
have to ensure that responses reach them. When such a person posts to a
mailing list that he's not subscribed to, his setting of Reply-to becomes
essential information. If the list software overwrites it, he may never see
the responses to his post.

The second disadvantage has to do with expectations, and in my opinion is
the most powerful argument against Reply-to munging. Most experienced mail
users are accustomed to two basic methods of replying: *reply-to-all* and *
reply-to-author*. All modern mail reading software has separate keys for
these two actions. Users know that to reply to everyone (that is, including
the list), they should choose reply-to-all, and to reply privately to the
author, they should choose reply-to-author. Although you want to encourage
people to reply to the list whenever possible, there are certainly
circumstances where a private reply is the responder's prerogative—for
example, they may want to say something confidential to the author of the
original message, something that would be inappropriate on the public list.

Now consider what happens when the list has overridden the original sender's
Reply-to. The responder hits the reply-to-author key, expecting to send a
private message back to the original author. Because that's the expected
behavior, he may not bother to look carefully at the recipient address in
the new message. He composes his private, confidential message, one which
perhaps says embarrassing things about someone on the list, and hits the
send key. Unexpectedly, a few minutes later his message appears *on the
mailing list!* True, in theory he should have looked carefully at the
recipient field, and should not have assumed anything about the Reply-to
header. But authors almost always set Reply-to to their own personal address
(or rather, their mail software sets it for them), and many longtime email
users have come to expect that. In fact, when a person deliberately sets
Reply-to to some other address, such as the list, he usually makes a point
of mentioning this in the body of the message, so people won't be surprised
at what happens when they reply.

Because of the possibly severe consequences of this unexpected behavior, my
own preference is to configure list management software to never touch the
Reply-to header. This is one instance where using technology to encourage
collaboration has, it seems to me, potentially dangerous side-effects.
However, there are also some powerful arguments on the other side of this
debate. Whichever way you choose, you will occasionally get people posting
to your list asking why you didn't choose the other way. Since this is not
something you ever want as the main topic of discussion on your list, it
might be good to have a canned response ready, of the sort that's more
likely to stop discussion than encourage it. Make sure you do *not* insist
that your decision, whichever it is, is obviously the only right and
sensible one (even if you think that's the case). Instead, point out that
this is a very old debate, there are good arguments on both sides, no choice
is going to satisfy all users, and therefore you just made the best decision
you could. Politely ask that the subject not be revisited unless someone has
something genuinely new to say, then stay out of the thread and hope it dies
a natural death.








On 25 May 2010 16:18, MJ Hewitt <admin at pcrecycler.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi everyone -
>
> the July edition of Linux Format magazine has an article starting on page
> 52 written by Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager, and it is well worth
> reading.
> I have summarised it on the website for those who may not get the magazine.
>
> http://www.pcrecycler.co.uk/club/node/116
>
> I have put some of the suggestions into practice which has changed the
> purpose of the wiki.
> http://www.pcrecycler.co.uk/cgi-bin/run.pl/Blackpool_LUG_Projects
>
> Tony, Les, notice that this will affect the write up of the meetings, which
> are switched back to the main site. You should both be able to produce story
> pages, please let me know if there are any problems.
>
> See you after the break.
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Mike Hewitt
>
> PC Recycler Ltd.
> 29-35 Ripon road
> Blackpool FY1 4DY
> 01253 293258
> 07711 736899
> www.pcrecycler.co.uk
>
>


-- 
Best regards,
Mike Hewitt

PC Recycler Ltd.
29-35 Ripon road
Blackpool FY1 4DY
01253 293258
07711 736899
www.pcrecycler.co.uk