can someone point me to the list instructions please ...

[Colin Law]

On 31 August 2013 21:34, David Woodhouse <dwmw2 at infradead.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2013-08-31 at 20:25 +0100, Colin Law wrote:
> ...
>> With gmail unfortunately there is no Reply to List, so I have to use
>> Reply to All, and then try and remember to manually remove the one to
>> the sender, though I am never sure whether posters want one direct to
>> them or not.
>
> If in doubt, do them the courtesy of including them. Always. Again, see
> the above-linked page.

Note that one poster above was unhappy that he received a private copy
in addition to that from the list.

>
>>  The biggest problem is that this list is different to
>> most that I use, where Reply goes to the list, so I have to remember
>> to use Reply to All in the first place, never mind remembering to
>> remove the poster.
>
> That's an odd thing to say. If you want to reply in public, you don't
> *have* to remember whether the list is one of the broken ones that sets
> a Reply-To: header or not, surely? You just do the same thing either
> way:

I don't think it is odd, again on most of the lists I subscribe to
posters prefer not to get two copies, so Reply is the right thing to
do.

>
> If you want to reply to everyone, hit 'reply all'.
>
> If you want to reply to the sender *privately*, hit 'reply'. And then
> check whether the list is misconfigured and has hijacked your private
> reply with a Reply-To: header. *THIS* is the time you care about how the
> list is set up, not when you actually *want* to reply to the list.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of how a list /should/ be setup the
fact is that many users think of a post as having come from the list,
not from an individual, and hence expect Reply to go to the list.  The
proof of this is the number of times posters here get it wrong and end
up sending to the individual.  I don't think there is any denying that
more users get it wrong on a list configured as this one is than get
it wrong on a list mis-configured as you described.  Also the result
of a user getting it wrong on this list is that it does not go to the
list, on the misconfigured list the result of getting it wrong is that
the post goes to OP and the list.

Colin

>
> (Some mail clients like Evolution will automatically detect the abusive
> Reply-To: setting and allow you to automatically ignore it so that your
> private reply and public reply buttons always do the expected thing,
> btw.)

That all depends on what the user thinks the 'expected thing' is.  One
users expected thing is another users confusion.

Colin