Reply to list vs. reply to sender?

[Sam Livingston-Gray]

Hey, all-

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be an uptick in replies that
might not have been intended to go to the entire list of 800+ people.

Is it time to revisit the list setting that changes the "Reply-To"
header? I know I've certainly appreciated being able to be lazy by
default, but it does seem to generate more noise—and, potentially, a
great deal of embarrassment. (Anybody want to go back and count the
number of replies to job postings in this year alone?)

For more arguments against our current setting, please see:
'"Reply-To" Munging Considered Harmful'
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

-Sam

[Matthew Boeh]

I vote for turning it off.

-Sam

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[Jacob Helwig]

I can understand how it's useful to some people, but I do think that
the failure mode for forced Reply-To is more harmful than it's worth.
+1 for turning Reply-To munging off.

On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Sam Livingston-Gray <gee...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Sam Livingston-Gray]

The poll I sent out got 44 responses. 73% were in favor of changing
the setting so that replies go to the original sender by default.

There were a few comments; I'd like to address one in particular:

"It's a mailing list. The default setting of the tool should
facilitate further participation in list threads. Preventing the
potential missteps of a few people should not be paid for with
continual minor inconveniences to people who want to use the tool for
its intended purpose."

While I definitely appreciate this, we've reached a size where we
can't assume that everyone shares basic assumptions about the culture
of the group or the behavior of the mailing list.

As one of several list administrators, I see a fair bit of email that
never makes it to the rest of you. Some of it is recruiters
advertising, say, a .NET job in New Jersey; I apply the banhammer.
Some of it is job posts without the literal string "[JOB]" in the
title; I send them a note asking them to resubmit with a better
subject (man, I wish Google Groups would let me edit subjects,
especially when it includes "(JOBS)" instead of "[JOB]"). ...And this
morning, it was a new list member (still sporting a shiny new
moderation bit) replying to a job post.

While my inner Spock is totally down with "the needs of the many
outweigh the needs of the few or the one," he also points out that
while the raw numbers support "leave it alone," the coefficients on
those terms can easily throw the balance the other way. As another
comment read (in part), "fail quiet is safer than fail noisy." And,
as Jonan pointed out, an accidental reply-to-list-to-job-posting can
have really really bad consequences.

Does anybody happen to know whether the difference in setting is as
simple as clicking "reply" vs. "reply all"?

-Sam

On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Sam Livingston-Gray <gee...@gmail.com> wrote: