[Baypiggies] list mail and gmail ?

[Guido van Rossum]

On 6/19/06, Anna Ravenscroft <annaraven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/19/06, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> > On 6/19/06, steve hindle <mech422 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I agree - neither system is perfect.  I just wish the (IMHO) 'common
> > > case' of wanting to sent group communications back to the group didn't
> > > require extra work.  The main justification I've seen for this is
> > > "some geek wrote a paper about how he embarassed himself one time.."
> >
> > What do you mean by "require extra work"? In most mailers that I know
> > the reply and reply-all have pretty much equal status.
>
> A reply-to-all for this email, for example, the headers on gmail read:
> To: Guido...
> CC: Steve Hindle..., baypiggies...
>
> If you don't want to send an email to Guido and Steve as well as to
> baypiggies, you have to edit the To and CC lines. Some people do that
> extra work. Some of us don't bother and just let it go whereever the
> list-owner set it up to go. If you just hit "reply", it only would go
> to you, not to baypiggies.

I rarely bother to edit the CC line, and please don't do it because
you worry about my getting two copies of the message -- gmail
recognizes that they are two copies of the same thing (since they have
the same message-id header) and only shows me one.

I sometimes *do* bother to edit the CC line, but that's when I
actually care to show (in that subtle way) whom I am responding to.
E.g. if I had chosen to cut the quote from Steve Hindle from this
message I could have cut him from the CC line too.

I still claim that if minimizing effort is concerned, reply and
reply-all are equal in required effort. That is unless the list is
configured with the dreaded reply-to header: then replying to the
sender only is a painful cut-and-paste operation (for me, and for
users of many other mail readers). And please don't tell me that I
should never reply to the sender only. That's really between me and
the sender.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)