Date   : Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:57:25 +0000
From   : afra@... (Phill Harvey-Smith)
Subject: The whole "reply to" issue

Jeff Simmons wrote:
> Can't see what the fuss is about.  If you want to reply to the originator
> hit reply.  If you want to reply to the group, hit reply-all.  It's
> relatively simple, can't believe why so many people get so worked up about
> it.

Well to my mind it's one of those things where people's expectations of 
the default behavior is coloured by what they have experienced eslewhere 
  as in my personal experience about 75%-80% of the lists I subscribe to 
*DO* reply to the list by default when I hit reply, that seems to most 
logical behavior, and as it is the most common it's the way people 
*EXPECT* things to behave, which is why we have so many "oops that went 
to the author and not to the list as it was supposed to" messages on here.

Let's put it this way I have had emails from people where I have replied 
to a mail of theirs and they claim I havn't said anything, because I 
follow the rules of the English language and put my reply *AFTER* the 
thing I'm replying to, but because some bright spark a few years back 
decided it would be quicker to have the reply at the top, and 90% of the 
mailers do this, when I obey the rules of the language (English) it 
trips people up, because they *EXPECT* the reply to be at the top.

Personally I have fixed my loal mailserver to put a Reply-To: back to 
the list for messages to this list, that way the reply button in my 
mailer does what I expect it to do.

Cheers.

Phill.

-- 
Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric !

"You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.