[Python-Dev] netiquette on py-dev

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 5:46 AM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:

> When responding to posts, should the poster to whom I am responding be
> listed as well as python-dev, or should my responses just go to python-dev?
>
> I see both ways occuring, and am not sure if one or the other is preferred.

I don't know of any webmail implementations that provide
reply-to-list, so a lot of us end up using reply-to-all.  Cleaning up
the headers requires at least deleting the To (which is where the
author ends up), and perhaps moving the list from Cc to To (to make it
pretty, I don't think a nonempty To is actually required by the RFC).
Especially on a mobile device this is a PITA.

So in most cases I suppose that the duplicate going to the author is
just an issue of "energy conservation" on the part of the responder.

Note that people who are really annoyed by the duplicates can set
their Mailman accounts to no-dupes, and Mailman won't send the post to
that person.  (This has its disadvantages in principle -- no List-*
headers and other list-specific info -- and in implementation -- at
best Mailman can change all your lists at one site, so you need to do
this on every site you subscribe to.  But it's an option.)  This won't
work for people who read on Gmane, of course, since they don't own the
subscription where they're reading the list.