[Fsfe-uk] How fsfe-uk works :o)

[Alex Hudson]

Hi all.

I thought I would start a new thread for this, short and sweet. Short
story: if you want to contribute to fsfe-uk, DON'T HIT THE REPLY BUTTON!
Use Reply-Group/Reply-all!

Long story: yes, I guess this is bizarre in a way, and it always catches
people out, me included. However, there is a good reason that it is this
way: if the Reply button was used to send email back to the list (often
called 'Reply-To Munging', there are plenty of articles pro- and ante-
if you search for them), you wouldn't be able to contact the original
author privately if you wished. 

This does mean occasionally people get caught out, as a few people have
done recently - this problem is always especially acute with a list like
ours that is sometimes dormant, sometimes bursting with activity. As a
rule, I will often reply back to the list if I'm contacted privately
with something so obviously trivial that it couldn't be intended to be
private, but sometimes that distinction is not always clear (especially
when the sender is trying to be deliberately controversial!)

So, if you want to send messages to our list (and, please do! that's
that it's here for!) you need to hit Reply-Group instead. Some clients
also have a Reply-List function as well (personally, I use Ximian's
Evolution client, and this has the Reply-List function). I'm told even
popular proprietary mail clients have this functionality :o)

This ends your public service broadcast, now back to our regular
programmming... 

Cheers,

Alex.