[Noisebridge-discuss] Moving into the 21st century w/ NB computing culture ...

[Andy Isaacson]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 09:40:42PM -0800, Taylor Alexander wrote:
> I actually like getting stuff in my inbox (I was against it before and
> wanted a forum), but it would be nice if this behaved more like google
> groups, or was a google group.

Thanks for the use case feedback!  I really appreciate it. :)

We're probably not going to switch to google groups so long as running
our own servers is cheap, easy, and effective.

We can definitely make changes to how our software operates, though.
That's one of the big benefits of running our own!

> In google groups (Hacker Dojo, Bay Area Reprap, etc) the e-mail always
> says it came from the group, but still shows the original sender as
> well. Anyway it means you don't have to hit reply all, and you don't
> end up with several people the message is being sent to.

That's a per-list option with Mailman, but it breaks a few more
sophisticated use cases.  Perhaps the complicated cases don't matter as
much on the Internet of 2011 as they did on the Internet of 2006, I
dunno.  A fairly neckbeard argument against it is at
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

FWIW, quite a few high-traffic lists for sophisticated audiences use the
same configuration that we do -- that's one of the reasons why Mailman
defaults the way it does.  Personally I'd prefer to go even more
hardcore and remove the [Listname] tag from the Subject line -- there's
a perfectly good List-Id header you should be using for your procmail
rules instead -- but enough people like the tags that I just put up with
the excess visual noise.

But, I'm definitely open to considering other options on this.

> In fact I never knew (and don't know) what the correct thing to do for
> that is. I just always hit reply all. Is that correct? Are there any
> real side effects to that? I'm always afraid those people will get the
> message twice.  I never do, but I was worried it was just because
> everyone else knew what they were doing.

"Reply to all" is the right thing to do, if I have a list going to a
folder, then the list copy goes into the folder and the "direct to me"
copy goes into my inbox -- exactly the behavior I want.  Gmail
apparently consolidates those into one item when they end up in the same
folder, which seems cromulent.  Mutt shows both messages adjacent in its
"index view" with an "=" sign to indicate that they're the same message
delivered twice; this isn't quite ideal -- I have to hit 'd' twice
rather than once -- but the current behavior is good enough and I could
probably "fix" it if I cared.

If you're using a mail system other than gmail or mutt and it's behavior
in this scenario is a problem, I can only recommend switching to one of
those. :) </troll>

-andy