reply-all should be discouraged

[cognitive.libertarian+ml at gmail.com]

* Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> [2010-02-22 16:49]:
> > 
> > The proper way for someone to request personal copies simply to
> > include the header "Mail-Followup-To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org,
> > [their personal address]".
> 
> I wonder how many users of this list have the slightest idea how to
> do this.  It is just not a practical suggestions.

You're generally right.  Some users have so little hope of
understanding that, that they probably don't even realize it's simply
a matter of tooling.  They have to do the best with what they know,
and we can't expect more of them.  Then there are users who fully
understand mail headers, and are just gaining awareness of this
particular field.  Those users can leverage the option.  And for them,
of course it's practical.  Their MUA may support it, and they simply
need to turn it on.  Or their MUA may support direct editing of the
headers, in which case there's no need to mess with options - they
just type the line out.

> Just how would users figure out that they need to Reply-All and then
> clean up the header? How many users know how to 'clean up the
> header'.  Many do not even know what the header is.  This is a
> financial application users list not an IT list.

I suspect you're misunderstanding me.  When I say "clean up the
header", I simply mean to delete addresses who don't need copies.
Anyone who has worked a white collar job (probably most of those on
this list) knows (or will discover the hard way) that you don't just
reply-all and hit send.  That action causes substantial anger in
companies w/ over 20 employees, and anyone who does it only does it
once.  This is not an IT concept - it's email etiquette in any
organization that uses email internally.