[rescue] Free HP 9000 K-class stuff

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On , May 24, 2002 at 11:57:54 (-0700), Gregory Leblanc wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Free HP 9000 K-class stuff
>
> Well, then you've NOT been paying attention to the rescue, geeks, or
> sunhelp mailing lists for any of those ten years.

On the contrary....

And indeed your own words confirm my claim.

>  There certainly ARE
> mistakes caused by folks forgetting to edit the headers, but I'm pretty
> sure that there are a lot more messages that wouldn't go to the list
> that should, if the reply-to weren't munged.

You cannot conclude anything about the messages that didn't go to these
lists that should have since they all did go to the list!

On the other hand there ARE MISTAKES.  Many.  Clearly visible.  Indeed
one can easily argue that there are many more mistakes than appear on
first glance -- mistakes that have caused far more fracture in the
community than anything else.

Meanwhile the number of times that I've suggested someone should re-post
a private reply to a list, or vice versa the number of times someone's
suggested the same in response to me, has been a tiny insignifcant and
almost immeasurable number compared to even the times I myself have
mistakenly posted to the list instead of replying privately.

It certainly doesn't help that these are some of the last few lists I
personally subscribe to which implement this policy, and especially in
this way of clobbering the Reply-To header.  (there are more lists which
are far less agressive about implementing a similar feature and I can
assure you I've never made the same mistake on any of them!)

>  Furthermore, we've already
> TRIED these lists with the reply-to not munged, and it didn't work out
> that well.  :)

I wouldn't call what happened a "trial" -- it was a mis-begotten
adventure from the word go, and all the expectations where set
incorrectly for it to even have a hope in hell of succeeding.

(personally I also thought it did work out quite well too, except of
course for the end result which was that the policy was reverted....)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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