[sf-lug] bad netiquete?

[Michael Paoli]

Quoting Steve M Bibayoff <bibayoff at gmail.com>:

> On 9/26/07, Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> > [yeah, don't send/reply to lists one can't post directly to ... tends to
> be
> > discourteous and annoy the list maintainers/moderators]
> 
> Out of curiosity, did anyone else find this bad netequate(requesting
> others to correct bad behavior from x-posting)?

Eh, ... debatable.  Blindly hitting "Reply-all" might also be considered
bad netiquete.  Whether or not telling or reminding folks to not do
something that might be considered bad netiquete ... is that bad netiquete?
... debatable.  But blindly hitting "Reply-all" and accidents do happen,
and are more likely to be of consequence when - at least in the context -
the results may not be what the user expected or desired.

And rather similar to Usenet, there are pros and cons of multiposting vs.
crossposting (though on Usenet the situation is a bit different, and one
should generally crosspost rather than multipost).  For lists/email, among
other points already noted earlier (on this and similar earlier threads
on this list), another point is Message-ID: - at least with more intelligent
mail client software, with crossposting - at least in theory - it should be
possible for the client software to determine that - for someone subscribed
to multiple lists - that they've received multiple copies of the same message,
whereas with multi-posting, they are - logically, and as far as the mail
client software would be concerned - distinct messages, rather than
multiple copies of the same message.  Not sure if much mail client software
has gotten quite that "smart" yet, ... but it should be possible for the
mail client software to do that.  Note that some list software may tweak
the body contents slightly (e.g. add a footer), and headers will differ a
bit (due to routing and such) ... but client software should (at least in
theory) be able to logically consider them duplicates based upon the
Message-ID: header match.

One could also tweak Reply-to: to try to encourage replies to go, or not to
go, to some appropriate place(s), but there are debatable netiquete aspects
there to, and also, some list software mangles Reply-to: headers.

Also, some list software will reject messages if there are more than N
To and/or Cc: recipients ... with common values for N being somewhere in the
range of 2 to 6.