get me on the rigth track

[John Ralls]

On Aug 1, 2014, at 4:04 PM, JOSEPH AIELLO <jraiello at verizon.net> wrote:

> HI;
> So I have been called stupid or abusive; I assure you I am not abusive. So help me.
>  . What is the proper way to respond  to the list ?  
>  . Why have a Reply statement at the end of the list?
>  . Why is this means of communication so convoluted?
>  . Why is the use  of "Forums" method not used as a means to pose questions, statements,etc.
> 
> I am really  a simpleton ..... joe

We don't use Forums because they're a pain to administer and secure, because our website is hosted separately from everything else, and because Derek is proudly an MIT uber-geek who disdains them. However, Nabble provides a forum-like interface to countless mailing lists, including ours at http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html. You might find that more to your liking.

Replying to the list isn't usually that hard, but you chose to make it much harder by subscribing in digest mode. That's intended for people who mostly want to read the traffic once or twice a day without participating much; it makes replying a good deal more complicated. If you're going to participate much in the conversation you'll find it far more convenient to unsubscribe from the digest and resubscribe to the regular list. https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user provides a convenient interface for doing that. If you do, the only thing you need to remember when you reply is to use "reply all" so that the list gets a copy.

If you decide to stay with digest mode, you need to remember to do two things when you reply:
* First, delete all of the quoted text except the bit that you're replying to.
* Second, change the subject in your reply from "Re; gnucash-user digest blah blah blah" to the subject of the message you're replying to. If you do the first part right you can just cut it from the quoted text and paste it into the subject field. Please make sure that it's exactly the same so that other people's mailers recognize it for grouping.

One other thing: Yahoo Web Mail doesn't distinguish quoted text unless you do the dance explained here: http://superuser.com/questions/29457/yahoo-mail-quote-original-message. Please be sure to do that.

Other mail clients don't need that dance and also make the first step easier by quoting only selected text if there's an active selection when you click "reply", so you might like to try some of them out.

Regards,
John Ralls