Bruce Jones remarked (in part),
>How a
>response gets routed - back to the originator or back to the entire
>list - depends on how the client mail programi is configured. In
>non-computerese, this means that you, the person typing in the
>response, determine who gets to see your response. You have to be
>aware and chose whether your response is going back to the person
>who sent the original message or if it will go out to everyone on
>shakuhachi@weber.ucsd.edu
I gather that many computer system administrators now set up the e-mail
facility for their users with the default value for "Reply" (or whatever it
may be called) being only the address of the person who composed the
original message to which a reply is being sent (or contemplated), and not
the mailing list from which it emanated or the addresses of all of the
recipients of the original message.
It's not hard to see why this has become the common practice: just about
everyone has, on at least one occasion (and usually only once!), replied
hastily (and perhaps heatedly) to a message, only to discover to his/her
horror that the reply -- intended only for the one person -- has been sent
to scores or hundreds of others as well. (I know of one case at a
university in which a vitriolic reply resulted in its author having to
apologize -- not by e-mail, but in person -- to every one of the recipients
of his accidentally mis-directed message.)
One part of the idea of a default setting is that it be the safe(st) one --
the one that will result in the least harm or fewest problems when used.
Given that the e-mail medium seems to encourage messages that are dashed
off and sent quickly, the current arrangement seems prudent, but it does
mean that people have to apply a little more thought to what they're doing
when wanting to reply to a mailing list message.
I confess that I didn't realize until quite recently that the text in
fields in message headers is just as copyable and pastable as any other
text: to send my reply to B. J.'s message to the entire list, for instance,
I just copied the string "shakuhachi@weber.ucsd.edu" in his message and
pasted it into the "To:" field of the header of my message. Voila! (This
won't work as easily in e-mail programs that have very simple editors, but
it can usually be got 'round somehow.)
Windsor Viney
*ichi-on jo-butsu*
one sound, become buddha
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Windsor Viney / Department of Philosophy / University of Waterloo /
Waterloo, Ontario / Canada N2L 3G1 / e-mail: wgviney@uwaterloo.ca / office:
Hagey Hall 362; telephone (519) 888-4567, extension 3809 / fax: (519)
746-3097 / residence phone: (519) 576-4820
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