Hello!
As I am new to this list,
and did not succeed in getting a readable index to the archives,
some of the questions here may be answered there,
please feel free to reply privately with references to documents
I should GET, and things that everyone already knows.

As a member of several lists which span professionals
to second-career and amateur subscribers, and as an activist,
I am often trying to help our lists work more effectively
for their members.

Some of the problems which must face all list owners
are kooks and others who want a megaphone and who will not stop,
private mail which does not belong on the list, and general noise.
We also must support hard-working list owners and moderators,
some of whom are comfortable moderating everything,
some a little, and some none at all.

One of the most productive solutions is the recognition that
in these situations we have multiple audiences,
not all of whom want to be in the same conversations with each other.

Here I have a combination of a number of questions,
suggestions, and solutions which either have been tried
or which I would like pointers on, or which I would like
the new release of ListServ software to address,
if that is possible.

If we can keep uppermost the principle that
it is the subscribers right to CHOOSE what to receive or not receive,
we can greatly improve how customers are served.

***

1.  The goal of this request is to minimize unwanted replies
to more than the sender intended.  By setting defaults so that
predictable common errors will have the minimum consequences,
ones which can be easily remedied if they were not right,
rather than the maximum consequences which cannot be remedied.
A private message sent to a large email list cannot be remedied,
and is a worse error, than a message intended for an email list
which was sent only to an individual.  The second is easily remedied,
but is often preferable to the community as a whole.
Because of this asymmetry, message senders should have to take an
intentional action to send to a large list rather than to just one recipient,
since the large mailing is a burden on more people.  And above all,
those receiving messages should have an easy CHOICE whether
to reply only to the originator or to an entire email list.  Currently
they often do not.
     Could the designers of ListServ software please set the
defaults to maximize the number of existing email programs
which will respect the DIFFERENCE between "reply to sender"
and "reply to all" in the case of email lists, recognizing that the "sender"
which users of ordinary English normally intend is the single
Originator, not the email list as sender.
There is of course a three-way distinction in principle,
between the Originator of the message,
the Sender (which can be an individual, or technically but not in
ordinary English, an email list),
and All (since a message can be sent to a combination of
individuals and email lists, this is distinct from either).
As the situation now stands, users such as those on AOL
who have a "reply to sender" and a "reply to all" do not actually
have a choice, when an email list gives itself as "sender".
They either reply to the email list (the effect of reply-to-sender),
or to the email list and also any other individuals or lists which
were listed as addressees of the same message.  This last
situation is rather rare to say the least.  The obvious choice is
the one they do NOT currently have, that is, to reply to either
the individual Originator (using reply-to-sender) or to the entire
email list (using reply-to-all).  The failure of this choice causes
numerous private messages to go to entire lists, burdening
everyone.  Even list users with years of experience do this,
which is what shows that the ergonomics of the software do not
yet fit ordinary people's behavior.

***

2.  For those who use Topics, it is important to make them both easy for
subscribers and easy for a list owner or moderator to fix the topic
designations only when necessary, and not to have to look at messages
which are alrady properly marked for an existing topic.
     a)  Currently messages whose subject lines are not marked
for an existing topic go by default into OT(her).  Could it be
made possible for these to be sent to the moderator instead?
Can the Validation or other facility do this?
If not, as it stands, we can achieve something similar
by using one additional Topic cateogory, call it UNCL(assified) for now,
have no subscribers receive the OT(her) topic area except the moderator,
and then the moderator can send messages into the appropriate topic
area if they are not already so marked. The moderator will not have
to look at messages which are properly marked.
    b)  Can the Validation or other facility respond to an incoming
message not marked for topic by returning the message to the sender,
(preferably not with any quotes added), prefaced or accompanied
by a reminder message that they need to specify an existing topic,
and a list of the topic abbreviations?
    c)  Can the Validation or other facility co-ordinate topic areas
with subscribers, permitting certain subscribers to post only
to certain topic areas?

***

3.  Can the number of possible Topic areas be increased beyond 10?
(OT(her) and ALL are currently included in those 10)

***

4.  Can it be made possible to have an abbreviation other than
the list name appear at the head of each subject line, when setting
SUBJecthdr ?  The reason is that long list names eat up the
very limited space available for viewing message titles,
in many email programs.  These SUBJecthdrs are very important
to people who subscribe to several email lists, in keeping their
email organized.  A two-or-three-letter abbreviation without brackets
would be nice.
    Can it be made possible to have SHORT headers combined
with SUBJecthdr ?  The amount of routing information at the
ends of messages these days is a substantial burden, almost never
used by most receivers.  (It can be retrieved separately if desired.)

***

5.  Can it be made possible to filter subject lines so that if there
is one "Re:" or one [SUBJecthdr], a second or third one cannot
be introduced through successive replies?  Such a sequence
leads to a subject line with no content information at all visible
in a limited width.  [This last request may not be relevant to
ListServ, it may be relevant to some other email list management
programs.]

***

Thanks to anyone for assistance.  Again, please reply
privately unless this is of interest to the whole list,
which I cannot judge since I am new to this list.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics
PO Box 15156
Washington, DC 20003
<[log in to unmask]>
Phone (202) 547-7678