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

Mark D. Johns mjohns at luther.edu
Sat Dec 16 09:33:04 PST 2006


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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