Dan Nagle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
...
>The number of times I've made lunch dates on comp-fortran-90
>is safely in the less than epsilon range.
I gave the lunch date idea as an obvious counterexample to
the idea that it was never appropriate to send only to the
author. Others might consist of:
"This is way off topic, but I'd be interested in a protracted
discussion of your algorithm for solving Lanchester's equations.
The usual solution is to simulate with a markov chain. Your
solution looks like it might be both more efficient and more
flexible. ..."
or
"If I make this comment on the open list, it will almost certainly
cause a flame war. But what do you think about deleting feature
so-and-so from the standard as soon as possible. It's worse
than useless - since is obscures the intent of ....."
I take discussions off-line all the time. It is not appropriate
to completely remove any convenient means of doing so.
>The number of times I've replied to discuss Fortran (or even
>the Fortran mailing list :-) is substantial. Far and away the
>most common is a reply to the group. The most common, IMHO,
>should be the default.
Fine, make replies to the list be the default behavior in some way
that does *NOT* remove the appropriate reply address. I'd
like a direct way to reply only to the list as well (in the old list,
I had to select "reply to all" and then delete the author's address).
There's no doubt about it, replying to the list is the most common.
There's no doubt about it, the most common should be the default.
But, *ONLY* if it doesn't remove the second most common
selection entirely.
>I others feel strongly contrariwise, I'll just have to go on
>mangling To: lists. :-)
So will I. But it's better than not having the other address at all.
>I like things as they are. Thanks to the list manager for
>fighting all the battles.
I think there should have been a vote before a substantial change
to the way the list works was made.
--
J. Giles
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