[Air-l] Answering questions on mailing lists & general mailing list notes

[Bonnie Nardi]

I can go either way on this but being  "risk averse" as my kids are 
always telling me, it seems that the rare but sometimes very 
embarrassing mis-posts can easily be averted with a simple click. Hurt 
feelings can result from such posts. There is community value in 
helping people avoid such incidents.

I don't see a big burden in clicking reply-all. We have many other real 
burdens with technology like remembering different passwords and user 
names, buggy software, lack of functionality, etc. Maybe we are 
focusing on this because we can control it.

--

Bonnie

Bonnie A. Nardi
School of Information and Computer Sciences
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3425
(949) 824-6534
www.artifex.org/~bonnie/

On Dec 16, 2006, at 9:33 AM, Mark D. Johns wrote:

> Gilbert B. Rodman wrote:
>> ...
>> Put a slightly different way, either way, there's inevitably going to 
>> be
>> a burden placed on *someone* to remember how the list is configured
>> if/when they choose to respond to an onlist message: ...
>
> What's less harmful? A message intended to be public accidentally sent
> to only one person, or a message intended to be private sent to a 
> public
> list?
>
> No matter how technically savvy we all may be, we are humans and humans
> sometimes make mistakes. We've all done it, if not on this list, on 
> some
> other. If the list were reconfigured, the consequences of those 
> mistakes
> would be minimized, and that would be better for everyone. The "cost" 
> to
> the list of such a change would also be minimal. We all know how to
> resend a message if we discover it only went to one person rather than
> to everyone.
> -- 
> Mark D. Johns, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor and Head of the
>    Department of Communication Studies
> Luther College, Decorah, Iowa USA
> http://academic.luther.edu/~johnsmar/
> -----------------------------------------------
> "Get the facts first. You can distort them later."
>      ---Mark Twain
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