At 11:34 PM -0800 01/02/1998, Tom Schooley wrote:

>On BirdChat when "reply to sender" is used the message only goes to the
>original author, not the entire list. To send a response to the BirdChat
>list you need to "reply to all". Can this feature be programmed into
>Tweeters?

Tom (and Dan, and all):

This has been a peeve of mine for a long time. Many lists are set so that
the default reply ("Reply To") is the individual author of the message,
*not* the list. It is simply not intuitive to think that, when you hit
Reply, you are broadcasting to all subscribers. The e-mail server is
merely a sorting and forwarding device, not a "sender." An automaton, a
dumb brute. It should be serving us, not itself.

It could be otherwise, witness BirdChat, as Tom points out. However, up
until now all of my behind-the-scenes attempts to correct this obvious
problem, by exchanging mail with the UW's infobureaucrats (the list owner,
apparently, is powerless), have been countered with a barrage of Rules and
Conventions and Protocols -- all of which, it seems, are flagrantly
violated by BirdChat and other lists that put the interests of their
real-world subscribers ahead of the tidy manuals of procedure devised by
the professional sysops.

We could cut way back on the volume of inappropriate postings if we could
get this fixed. It seems so evident, like fewer cars would drive off the
road if they all had steering wheels. But I guess the cybertypes still
want us to steer with our feet, the way they learned to do it.

Maybe Dan could move this forward if we all got behind him on it. What
say, tweets?

Hal Opperman