On 04:00 PM 5/28/01, David W. Tamkin wrote:
>Oh, I don't know. An RTS list gives you two such buttons,
Not on my client it doesn't. It gives me two options, reply to the author
alone, or reply to BOTH the author and the list (which I consider to be
rude most of the time). (Is it different on your email client's interface?)
I want an easy option for any given list subscriber to elect to reply to
the list ALONE, or reply to the author ALONE, no matter how the list itself
is configured. (Perhaps I've overlooked something, and if so please clue
me in, but I have yet to see a common mailer that has these as the two
common reply options.) That way no one has any excuse for sending a
private reply to any list. Yet it is easy to send a "meant for the list"
reply to the list, without needlessly adding additional addresses.
>and people still
>play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey instead of engaging their brains.
When you click on "reply to all" with lists configured with RTS like this,
the client will address a reply to the author with a cc to the list. If
numerous people do that in the thread, suddenly someone many posts back is
being sent ALL the followups, even when the topic has drifted from *that*
person's point (which is often the case). I consider this careless and
rude, and fail to see the value in making that the default configuration
when you want to reply to the list. If supposedly clued people like the
subscribers of THIS list frequently get it wrong (and they do, I have the
archives to prove it), we have no reason to act as if the general masses
are "play(ing) pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey instead of engaging their
brains". It is the user interface that sucks, not the people.
Read Alan Cooper's _The Inmates are Running the Asylum_ for more rants on
bad user interface design:
<http://www.cooper.com/cooper_books.htm>
jc
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