[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Header Etiquette (was: MP3 Patent Issues)

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jul 02, 2000 at 05:17:33PM -0400, Jed Davis <jldavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
was heard to say:
> Hmm... I've been sending To: freeciv-dev and CC'ing no-one unless they 
> specifically ask, but I'm noticing that other people seem to send To: the 
> person they're replying to (and sometimes the next person before that, 
> etc.) and CC: the list (which is what my client defaults to, although it's 
> got a rather nice dialog for choosing the recipients before composing the 
> message).  Am I doing the Right Thing here?  I didn't want people to get 
> redundant copies of list messages.

  There are essentially two schools of thought here (somewhat exaggerated for
comic effect, of course ;-) ):

  School A: "Redundancy Is Evil.  Any attempt to send me two copies of a
             message costs me X amount of download time (and money), is
             simply annoying and ill-considerate, and should be a crime
             punishable by death, or at least public humiliation."

  School B: "I am subscribed to a hundred mailing lists and get 1,000 messages a
             day.  Messages which are sent To: these lists are filtered into
             separate folders.  I DEMAND that you send me a private copy of
             all email traffic, or I will shun you and never speak to you
             again (primarily because I can't find your messages under all my
             other email)"

  I'm firmly in School B -- I only subscribe to a dozen or so lists, and many
of those are pretty quiet, but it's still very nice to have replies to messages
I wrote drop into my personal mailbox (which is the first thing I read, and
gets the most attention)  I also don't think that, when you download 50 email
messages at a pop, one or two redundant ones make that much of a difference in
the overall volume.
  Obviously, other people disagree, and I think this is a somewhat religious
issue :)  What we really need is a Ccs-Requested: header, which is "yes" if
the sender wants Ccs and "no" otherwise (or blank if he/she has no preference,
in which case the preference of the sender is used)
  (note: this suggestion is facetious. :P )

  I also get really annoyed with lists that set Reply-To, although mutt does
make it possible (thank God!) to override that to send the author a private
reply.  Group-reply still breaks horribly, though.. :(

  Daniel


-- 
/----------------- Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@xxxxxxxxx> -----------------\
|  The sigfile hits! | "I've struggled with reality for thirty-five years, but |
| You feel confused. |  I'm glad to say that I finally won."                   |
|                    |   -- _Harvey_                                           |
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