I have gotten enough feedback to go ahead.  I have changed the list behavior of both Dialogue and OE so that when you reply to a list message, the default will be that your reply goes to the sender (not the list).

If you want your reply to go to the list, do "reply all". Keep in mind that this new behavior applies to list messages going forward starting with this . If you reply to older messages, the reply will still go to the lists.

We'll see how it goes, but I think this will be an improvement, correcting what was arguably a mistake I made about ten years ago :-) Hmmm, now we'll see if the change actually works, I'm not sure. But I'll worry about that!

Tim


On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 3:02 PM, Timothy Wegner <tim@tswegner.net> wrote:
This is one of my VERY FEW list messages about the list itself. <grin!> I have a question for you all.

Both of our lists are set up so that when you reply to a message, the reply (by default) goes to the whole list, as opposed to just the person who posted. This is often what people want, particularly if they have in mind continuing a dialogue that they want the whole list to see.

The down side of this is we ALL get very many three-word messages with replies like ""great!" "Glad you're home", "Our prayers are with you". Good messages, but probably not optimal for the whole list to see

The way I have the lists set up in this regard is NOT the recommended way for just this reason. I could change the behavior so the default would be that your reply GOES TO THE PERSON, not to the whole list. 

Pro - this would cut the short messages way down.

Con - If you really meant to make a substantive comment to be sent to the whole list, you would have to edit the "To" field to do this. I am sure some people would send messages just to the sender by mistake.

I would appreciate feedback on this, either to me me, or if you wish, the whole list.

What I am inclined to do is just change this behavior so the reply defaults to just the sender and see how it works. I can always change it back if folks don't like it.

I'm just sending this to dialogue, but I'll implement whatever we decide on both lists.

Tim