[kepler-dev] mailman changes: reply_goes_to_list/htdig

[Peter Reutemann]

Hi Mark

> 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.

Cool, that's gonna make life a lot easier.

> 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?

>From my experience and in my opinion, having the reply-to pointing
back to the list instead of the poster outweighs the occasional
surprise in posting something to a wider audience. Here's why:
While I was maintaining the WEKA software and moderating the mailing
list (and mainly answering posts there) it got to a point where I was
posting way too many private replies back to the list, since people
just couldn't click on "reply all" (or didn't care who'd receive the
email, poster or list), that I reconfigured mailman. Since then, as
far as I can tell, there have been only a handful of mis-posts to the
list instead of sending it privately. Considering that the switchover
was several years back and that the mailing lists has several hundred
posts/month, I think it was worth it (no private one-on-one help
sessions, but accessible to everyone). But then, the audience on the
kepler mailing lists could be different and I haven't been subscribed
to them for that long.

> 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).

Point taken.

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ
http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/           Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174