[kepler-dev] mailman changes: reply_goes_to_list/htdig

[Matt Jones]

Hi Peter,

I've requested that our sysadmins add in htDig support or similar for
the mailing list archives.  This may take a bit, but we will work on
it.  We will also be sure the lists are google indexed.

The reply_to option is the mailman default -- back to poster.
Changing it to point at the list has the unfortunate effect of
sometimes causing people to reply to a much broader group than they
intended.  Most people are used to 'reply' going back to the sender,
and 'reply_all' getting delivered to all recipients.  That is how the
Kepler lists are configured, and I suspect that changing it would
cause confusion for many people who are used to the traditional uses
of reply and reply_all.  I agree its frustrating if people don't reply
to the list, but I'm not sure if that frustration outweighs the costs
of a surprising reply function.  maybe this is something that we
should poll more broadly and see what behavior people on the list
would prefer.  Should 'reply' go to the poster only or to the whole
list?

Matt

PS Please don't cross-post to both lists.  Many people are subscribed
to both lists and don't need two copies of each email. kepler-dev is
for primarily development-related discussions, and kepler-users for
usage-related questions (granted, there is a lot of grey area in
there).

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Peter Reutemann <fracpete at waikato.ac.nz> wrote:
> Hi there
>
> Something that I noticed on the Kepler mailing lists (kepler-dev and
> kepler-users). A lot of people don't seem to use the "reply-all", but
> send private replies instead. This makes it quite hard to find all of
> the conversation and especially answers in the archives. By changing
> the mailman's "reply_goes_to_list" option from "Poster" to "This
> list", mailman will add a "reply-to" to the posts that is pointing to
> the mailing list. Spending quite some time on mailing lists, I find it
> frustrating if people always send one private emails instead of
> posting to the list. Setting this option reduces the amount of
> privately sent emails significantly.
>
> Another thing that would be handy, enabling htdig on the archives.
> Just to enable searching the archives directly on the server hosting
> the archives instead of going through Google or another search engine.
>
> That's just my 2c...
>
> Cheers, Peter
> --
> Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ
> http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/           Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174
>



-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matthew B. Jones
Director of Informatics Research and Development
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
UC Santa Barbara
jones at nceas.ucsb.edu                       Ph: 1-907-523-1960
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinfo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~