gEDA-user: Abuse of "reply" considered harmful: how to post to a mailing list

[Colin D Bennett <colin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

To all participants on the geda-user mailing list who wish to begin a
new thread of discussion:

Whenever you intend to post a message to begin a *new* thread of
discussion, do not use the "reply" feature of your e-mail application to
do so. Instead, click the "To: gEDA user mailing list
<geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>" address in another message from the list,
or manually compose your new message to "geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx".

The "reply" feature is great for capturing the context of a reply
because it includes a reference to the original message.  The problem
with improper use of the "reply" feature is that it clutters the
existing thread of discussion with an unrelated, separate thread.

There are two negative effects when you use "reply" as a way to post
message that is not in fact a reply:

(1) To your own detriment, your message is likely to be skipped over by
people who are uninterested in the thread to which it was added as a
reply.

(2) To the detriment of others, it clutters the existing thread of
conversation and makes it harder to follow the discussion for other
readers.

If you don't use a "threaded" view (where messages are displayed as a
tree, having each reply as a child of the message to which it is
replying), the effects of the "reply" feature are generally not
apparent, so this is just a reminder that many readers (and web
archives of the list) do read the list in a threaded presentation.  (If
you haven't tried a threaded view, I do recommend it!)

Regards,
Colin

P.S. I debated whether this message should be a "reply"... ;-)


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