Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com From: "Dave Korn" To: Subject: RE: (now OT) cygwin processes and system'ed processes using 100% CPU Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:17:46 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <4017A165.48B5D04F@dessent.net> Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Jan 2004 13:17:46.0875 (UTC) FILETIME=[1EFABCB0:01C3E5A1] > -----Original Message----- > From: cygwin-owner On Behalf Of Brian Dessent > *sigh* No, that's how mailing lists are supposed to work. > Lists where the ML software forces the Reply-To to the list > address are broken. See > Without having much opinion myself on how things should be done for the cygwin list, I'll just observe that that article is not a balanced review but a one-sided polemic based on a false dichotomy. The author of it presents and contrasts these two options, "Reply to everyone" and "Reply to just the author", and demonstrates how reply-to and reply-to-munging interacts with those. In doing so, he completely ignores the *third* option, "Reply to just the list" - in fact, such an option is not mentioned once anywhere in the article. Yet in real life, people are *always* saying "Don't Cc me, just reply to the list"; the author of that article skates entirely over the issue that his "Reply to all" option spams the original poster with pointless duplicates if the original poster is a list subscriber. He also only addresses the one case of munging, where a Reply-to header is blindly added to mails, overwriting any Reply-To that might already be there. He doesn't consider the option of only adding one to mails that don't already have one. IMO, most of his objections become automatically invalid given the simple proviso that the list only sets the Reply-To header if one hasn't been supplied by the original poster. Having two different methods as the cygwin list now does, one of which munges and one of which doesn't, seems to me to give the ultimate combination of flexibility and respect for the original poster's wishes. Let me address just his summary: 1>It violates the principle of minimal munging. Not if it's only under control of the original poster. As he himself agrees, sometimes munging is reasonable. 2>It provides no benefit to the user of a reasonable mailer. Simply untrue; as pointed out above, "Reply to just the list" is as difficult the way he suggests doing things as "Reply to just the author" is when doing things the way he doesn't like. So which of those two do people want to do more often? I'd bet quite a lot that wanting to reply to just the list is what people want to do more often than replying privately to just the author by a factor of hundreds-to-one or more. 3>It limits a subscriber's freedom to choose how he or she will direct a response. Again, I'll agree that munging shouldn't be automatic, and shouldn't overwrite any *existing* Reply-to header. 4>It actually reduces functionality for the user of a reasonable mailer. This is the same as 2> above, and untrue for the same reason. 5>It removes important information, which can make it impossible to get back to the message sender. This problem is also solved by my response to 3> above. 6>It penalizes the person with a reasonable mailer in order to coddle those running brain-dead software. This is just another repitition of 2 and 4, combined with a bit of elitist snobbery for added flameworthiness. 7>It violates the principle of least work because complicates the procedure for replying to messages. As pointed out above, he completely ignores the "Reply to List only" option and the fact that it is by far the more common choice than "Reply to author only" or "Reply to author AND list". 8>It violates the principle of least surprise because it changes the way a mailer works. First he complains about brain-dead mailers. Now he's complaining about mailers that correctly respond to RFC822-standard headers. That's just silly. It doesn't change the way a mailer works, which is and always has been to reply to the Reply-To header if present, else the From: header. 9>It violates the principle of least damage, and it encourages a failure mode that can be extremely embarrassing -- or worse. I think this is the real point of the entire article. The guy has publicly embarassed himself at some point and his humiliation has driven him to write this emotionally-driven massive over-reaction. 10>Your subscribers don't want you to do it. Or, at least the ones who have bothered to read the docs for their mailer don't want you to do it. How does he know what subscribers to random lists want or don't want? Different lists have their own different cultures, traditions and standards. He attempts to make his statement true by only counting the opinions of those who agree with him and dismissing everyone else as lazy people who can't be bothered to read mailer docs. This is a well-known fallacy. I think there's plenty of good material in that article, but it's overwhelmed by the guy's personal emotional bias. I don't think that the article deserves to be treated as one of the standard pieces on netiquette and pointed at as some kind of authority. And I think the cygwin list by providing the posters with every kind of option gets it most right of all. cheers, DaveK -- Can't think of a witty .sigline today.... -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/