Re: Mailing list guidelines?

[Bob Proulx]

Emanuel Berg wrote:
> The bug report system: I see (and agree). I had never seen the mail
> thing happening before on Usenet, but I have only been active on
> groups that are not about computers.

When you say USENET I think of newsgroups and so I assume you are
reading the gnu.emacs.help newsgroup.  On a newsgroup it is true that
you would not normally receive replies by email.  But gnu.emacs.help
and help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org are special.  They have the gateway between
them and therefore when using the gnu.emacs.help newsgroup you are
actually using the mailing list.  And the reverse for when we are
using the mailing list.

If you were using a pure newsgroup then what you say would always be
true.  You would never receive a reply by email unless someone decided
to email you privately.  It just wouldn't be done.  But on the mailing
lists we receive the postings to our mailbox and reply-all will then
send you a copy of the message directly.  If someone makes a mistake
with their mailer and does a private reply then you will get the
private reply and none of us on either the newsgroup or the list will
see it.  That happens all too often.

> One source of confusion is that you refer to a mailing list, but to me
> it looks like any other newsgroup.

And when I read the mailing list your postings look like any other
email message.  Except that your message headers also say:

  Path: 
usenet.stanford.edu!news.kjsl.com!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!nuzba.szn.dk!pnx.dk!news.stack.nl!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
  Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
  Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:198435

That makes it pretty obvious you are posting to the newsgroup and the
gateway is sending it to the mailing list.

> When I hit `f' for `gnus-article-followup-with-original' (to
> followup a post), is that equivalent to the "list-reply" that you
> mention?

I don't happen to use gnus so first let me say I don't know gnus
well.  But what you say makes sense and I think so.  I think those are
equivalent.

For people posting to a newsgroup there is never a "newsreader" option
to send the newsgroup posting to the original poster.  Although some
newsreaders will give the option to send an email to the original
poster.  But that would cross from "newsreader" to "mail user agent"
option.  And of course gnus is both so the distinction is blurred.

> If the OP is not a subscriber, will [s]he still get a reply, as a
> mail?

No.  If the OP is not a subscriber and we either list-reply as a mail
list user or we follow-up as a newsgroup posting then the original
poster will not get a copy of the message.  However the original
poster might be reading the mailing list through the archive or
through a web interface such as Gmane.

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/

  http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help

Many people read the mailing list from the above web interfaces.
Gmane in particular is very popular and featureful.

> (In Gnus, you can reply to the OP by email by pressing `r' for
> `gnus-summary-reply', but I never used it. Then, also, I take it the
> rest of the list won't get it?)

I don't know gnus so don't know.

> Answers to the above questions could go into the FAQ, as well as your
> solution how not to get the mail followups.

I appreciate the feedback.  Hopefully this discussion helps to explain
things.  If you have other questions or suggestions please send them in.

> I agree that writing the FAQ incrementally whenever there is
> meta-discussion is the best solution. But, unless there are many
> people working taking in interest, perhaps a wiki is overkill.

The problem is that volunteer time comes and goes.  It is good to have
the ability for people to contribute incrementally.

> If you write it (and format it) in the way that you find most GNU
> documentation (which you know a lot better than me), it'll be more
> accessible (for example, to w3m users), *and* you won't have any
> overhead fighting spammers. Well, just a thought.

By default I would probably do it using texinfo.  That is a reasonable
format to write documentation.  It formats to the web well.  You can
link directly to individual entries.  Here is an example of the
coreutils FAQ.

  http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/

Bob