Reply to sender December 3, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : listservs , trackbackI generally give up on email groups where the owner insists on having the default set so that replies go to the individual sender rather than the group. The argument in favour seems to be based on prioritising the prevention of accidental damage caused by somebody who doesn’t know what they are doing sending a message which is intended to be private, out to an entire membership of a list. Another argument is that ‘reply to group’ tends to encourage extended discussions between a small number of individuals that nobody else is interested in and would be better conducted in private.
Both of these arguments would seem to me to be based on a concept of an email list as more of a place for making one-off announcements than for holding group discussions, and yet some intended discussion lists are encumbered with the same set up.
To counter the first, I would argue that mistakes caused by the unwary thinking they are replying to a group when their messages gets sent only to one person are more damaging, since cumulatively they sap the vitality of a group, foreshorten discussions and can reduce conversations levels down below the necessary critical mass.
Some people like a quiet life, but then why a join a discussion list if you don’t want to be bothered by people talking to each other in public?
Also, by pandering to the type of poster who doesn’t understand the idea of group discussion and thinks email is a medium only for 1 to 1 communication, such people are going to have that view and expectation reinforced which will only make them more likely to make the mistake should they later join a group which has been set up properly. So the solution of setting the default incorrectly for an intended discussion list rather than an announcement list is actually contributing to the problem rather than solving it.
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