I'm all in favor of democracy, but having an election to determine
whether a listserv should be primarily a means of responding to an
individual not the group is self-defeating. All listservs, when they
get going, have little glitches such as we experienced last fall. They
are not a reason, though, to change the nature of the listserv. In
time, members will be more careful and the listserv will grow. But if
you turn off the group default reply, you will essentially weaken the
lists ability to grow, which is a crucial concern at this moment.
The way to make a list grow is for people to use it the way it is
intended to be used: which is everyone automatically talks to everyone
(and if they want they can reply to individuals only). By inverting
that default, you simply turn it into individual emails.
You can have a vote on this, but if the vote goes against the group
discussion default, then I would say you don't have a listserv anymore.
yrs,
John
___________
John Bryant, English Department, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549
>>> Barbara Bordalejo <[log in to unmask]> 03/22/07 12:12 PM >>>
Dear John,
I agree with you in part and would prefer to keep the settings as
they were. However, my impression (and it is just an impression) is
that most people in the list have a preference for the new settings.
What I propose then, is that those who have an opinion on this matter
send a public message to the list stating their position (even those
of you who already have sent me a private message). We could count
votes the last day of March and see what the majority prefers. How
does this proposal sound?
BB
On 22 Mar 2007, at 15:52, John Bryant wrote:
> Dear Barabara,
>
> This seems to defeat the purpose of a list, which is to make it
> easy as
> possible to communicate with the entire group. While some will
> accidentally do the private message thing, that occurrence is rare and
> endurable, and I think we should not change the regular list approach
> merely to preclude the possibility of accidents.
>
> John
>
> ___________
> John Bryant, English Department, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
> 11549
>>>> Barbara Bordalejo <[log in to unmask]> 03/22/07 8:35 AM >>>
> Dear all,
>
> You all know that there have been problems with private messages
> accidentally sent to the list by several of us. As of today, I have
> changed the settings so when you hit reply you will reply to sender.
> If you want the message to go to the whole list, you will have write
> or paste the list's address in the "To:" field.
>
> Cheers,
>
> BB
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