Mailing Lists

[Paul Wiener]

On Tue, 6 Apr 1999 18:01:19 +0200, Roger Lindmark wrote:

>On Mon, 5 Apr 1999 16:34:30 -0700, Paul Wiener wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 6 Apr 1999 00:54:47 +0200, Roger Lindmark wrote:
>>
>>>I am not sure that you are correct. Crossposting can be inhibited by
>>>the fact that you have to be subscriber to be able to post to a list.
>>>Many lists have this restriction.
>>
>>I don't see the relevance of the foregoing.
>
>It means that, if Subba posts to this List and two others in the same
>message I will not be able to crosspost to the other two lists about
>networking as I am not a subscriber to those lists. Many lists have
>this restriction of subscribers only to avoid spamming.

People often subscribe to families of mailing lists and or newsgroups
relating to topics they're interested in. For instance, anyone who's on either
of the PMMail beta testing lists is likely to be on this list. There's also a
good chance that if they have both platforms, they'll be on both PMMail
beta lists, not just one--and they may be on the PMI lists as well.

If someone subscribing to all those list saw a news story about Southside,
they might be tempted to xpost it to all the Southside lists. Since they
subscribe to all of them, the message would appear on each of them. It might
even be appropriate and on-topic for each of them. But later down the road,
when people start responding to such messages, the trouble starts.

>>>In addition, if you hit reply to for
>>>this list for instance you will only reply to the list or the sender. I
>>>think most people use this and rarely reply to all.
>>
>>The point is that when the person replies, the one list that gets put into the
>>address field is not necessarily the list the person meant to reply to; i.e., the list the
>>person was reading the message on.
>
>I have crossposted to three different lists at a few occaisions and in
>a message saved from the listserver of one list  it seems, if you hit
>reply you can choose between the List you got the message from or the
>sender. However, some rare lists like TEAMOS2HELP-L can cause trouble
>as you then have to choose reply to all always when replying to the
>list. You can as a PMMail/2 user circumvent this by using a REXX-script
>at send that removes the reply-to information of the header of outgoing
>messages to this List.

This discussion is not about how a sophisticated user like you can handle
the situation at his end. It's about the problems that get created when
relatively naive subscribers to various mailing lists reply to an xpost. Some
these people may not even be aware of the difference between "Reply" and
"Reply to All."

I have recently become co-owner of a "family" of mailing lists. The lists
have a high degree of overlap in membership. Xposting is forbidden on
all the lists, but happens anyway, resulting in the kinds of problems we
have been discussing; so I am talking real world here, not speculation.
The problem has become so bad that earlier today, the senior list owner
told me he's considering banning anyone who xposts in the future, instead
of just issuing the customary warning.

Subba Rao is being very responsible in looking for a way to post the same
message to multiple lists without using multiple To's, Cc's, or Bcc's.
Though there have been one or two decent work arounds proposed for
him, I think Southsoft should add this consideration to their wish-list.

--
___________
Paul Wiener

paulish@paulish.com
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KJ6AV@callsign.net
pw@i.am
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