Hi Folks,

It may be foolish of me to be critical of the way people reply, especially when the rate of reply compared to the membership of the list is so low, BUT …

It is usually not necessary to post both to the list and directly to the person concerned. If you do, the recipient gets two copies of the same message. Not much point in that. Then when others hit “Reply to All”, the problem becomes logarithmic. I use automatic sorting of my e-mail into folders, simply because I receive so much e-mail it would otherwise be impossible to deal with it. Recently, when someone on the list sent a message with an injudicious use of “Reply to All”, I received six copies of the same message.

This is not meant as a criticism of any one individual, but a habit I see on many lists.

Trust in the power of one!

~~~

G’day Group

I’ll try to remember in the future not to copy [to an individual] like this, and apply it to the whole group if that is the consensus.

I wish it were that simple…

As for me, I find it a really helpful courtesy to be sent a personal copy. Some of the groups I belong to have weekly traffic of hundreds of messages. I don’t get all of these sent to my mailbox. For some I get a daily or weekly digest sent. For others I get nothing at all and just browse the message subjects on the web archive when I have time. You can achieve much the same thing with filters and I do a bit of this too on groups that don’t offer digest or archive services.

Of course a reply to one of my own posts is one I probably do want to read, and the personal copy helps me to reply more quickly than I might have otherwise. The duplication doesn’t worry me nearly as much as missing the message among the chaff would.

But that’s just the way I work. This group can set its own nettiquette and I’ll try to comply. And I hope I’ll remember Greg’s very reasonable request in future! But I thought I should also point out that his assumption that it is always pointless (“the power of one”) is a bit wide of the mark.

I also have a suggestion as to something Greg (and others of like mind) can do which might help with all his groups, not just this one.

To reduce the number of these copies, you could try to set up your own email software to point the “reply-to” field to “sender”, rather than to your own email address as it is currently. People wanting to reply to the group could then simply use their “reply” option or button. As you have the “reply-to” field set up now, they need to use the “reply to all” option and then edit the addresses manually. And as you rightly point out, this leads to unwanted copies if they’re lazy.

Just a suggestion, and your software may not allow it. My version of Eudora seems to do it by default. But if it does work, you could then also suggest it to other groups you’re active on. If people get into the habit of using the “reply” button, it might make a significant difference.

Yours in Christ […..]