On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 09:29 -0800, Steve Lamb wrote:
> David Woodhouse wrote:
> > Again consider the failure modes. One way round, you rudely exclude a
> > person from a discussion they wanted to participate in. The other way,
> > someone gets an extra mail or two which they could do without. Which
> > failure mode is it more important to avoid?
>
> Or to look at it another way.
>
> In one mode you're not contributing to the spamming of an active
> participant. In the other you are.
FSVO 'spamming'. In particular for a meaning of 'spamming' which
includes merely causing them to receive an extra copy of a mail which is
descended from one of their _own_ posts. A copy which many people do
actually _want_, and which others can fairly easily filter out if it
really does offend them.
If that is your definition of 'spamming' then yes, you'd be contributing
to the 'spamming' of an participant who chose to be active in _this_
particular thread of discussion.
My assertion is that this 'spamming', if that's what you wish to call
it, is far less evil than deliberately omitting a participant who
_wishes_ to remain active, but cannot unless you do them the courtesy of
including them in the discussion.
> I'm sorry, but the list is there to do the distribution. If a person
> posts to the list and expects a reply then it is rude of them to expect the
> other person to CC them. The presumption, rightly so, is that they posted to
> the list, they're reading the list and unless requested no CC is needed since
> they'll get the mail, most times, a few seconds or minutes later.
That assumption is sometimes true -- but it is not _always_ true. They
may _not_ be subscribed to the list, and if subscribed they may not be
actively reading it. And even if they are reading it they may well
prefer, as I do, to receive a direct response too.
Whichever you do by default, you're going to make _someone_ unhappy
occasionally if you don't know their preference.
If you include the previous poster(s) in the recipients, they can easily
filter out the duplicates if they so desire -- it's not really much of a
problem for them if they prefer to receive only one copy.
If you _omit_ the previous poster(s), then some people just aren't going
to see your response to their post. That is a failure mode which they
_cannot_ work around; you are simply refusing to allow them to
participate in the discussion any further.
Since the latter failure mode cannot be worked around the recipient (or
more to the point non-recipient), it is my opinion that it is far more
of a problem than the former failure mode, and hence it is best avoided.
Because of this, I find it highly inconsiderate for people to
deliberately drop me from the recipients when they reply to me.
As I've said recently to others... you may have different opinions; that
is your right.
--
dwmw2
