[SunHELP] Re: ADMINISTRIVIA: New list policies on "for sale" ads (Good Grief)

[Dave Garten]

Jan Johansson <janj-sunhelp at wenf.org> said:

snip-
>
> Educate the users, do not try to get around them.
> 
snip-

Amen.  I second Jan's comment.  It is just plain 'painful' to reply to an 
individual on these lists.  Thats counterintuitive.

The 'Paperware Archive' essay he points out is convincing.  You can grok his 
summary (edited) below:

"Many people want to munge Reply-To headers. They believe it makes reply-to-
list easier, and it encourages more list traffic. It really does neither, and 
is a very poor idea. Reply-To munging suffers from the following problems: 

-It limits a subscriber's freedom to choose how he or she will direct a 
response. 
-It actually reduces functionality for the user of a reasonable mailer. 
-It removes important information, which can make it impossible to get back 
to the message sender. 
-It violates the principle of least work because complicates the procedure 
for replying to messages. 
-It violates the principle of least surprise because it changes the way a 
mailer works. 
-It violates the principle of least damage, and it encourages a failure mode 
that can be extremely embarrassing -- or worse"

..or you can read 'the whole truth' here;
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html  
Wisdom is attractive.  

V/R

DG

-- 
Dave Garten
dgarten at nova.org
dgarten at totalimage.org