On Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:53:52 -0800 Joe Moore <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>I just spent a minute with it.  It REALLY looks good. An option to reply
>to <from:> or <list:> addresses would dress it up even more.
 
We decided  NOT to  do that as  it will  most likely result  in a  lot of
"junk" postings. A few months ago I started receiving occasional messages
that would say "Geez, get real you  stupid moron!", or then "Hey right on
dude, these  guys are just  a bunch of  *beep* losers!" These  would come
from people  I'd never heard  of, without  any reference to  anything I'd
remember seeing  recently. Half of the  time the origin address  would be
invalid and  I wouldn't be  able to reply to  ask what they  were talking
about. Sometimes I'd get a bounce saying  no such user. Then I started to
detect a  pattern and eventually I  figured that someone must  have put a
web interface with mailto tags to the archives of some list I am a member
of, or  more likely was a  member of several  years ago when I  still had
time to  post things :-)  Anyway, I don't  think that inviting  people to
chime in with little out of context  comments now and then is a good idea
at all.  If people have something  meaningful to say, they  can spend the
extra 5  seconds to compose a  new mail message. There  just isn't enough
context in a mailto tag to promote an intelligent, responsible dialog.
 
>I will be interested to see what  the options are if the archives are on
>a host that is not set up for web access.
 
The archives have to be on the same host, or at least directly accessible
(LAN, NFS, etc).
 
  Eric