In response to the recent difference of opinion on Reply-To: defaults: It seems to me that the list owner has to look at the topic, the types of participants, whether membership is already restricted, or in the other extreme, whether the list is gatewayed to NETNEWS. On the biosph-l list, which if my memory holds is over 5 yrs old now, I found that nothing drove off professional and academic participants than lots of chatty msgs, which often were replies from net novices who either didn't think or didn't care that a good number of people were getting their messages which were of interest only to the sender: "Yes, send me a copy too," "I'd be interested in your answer to that when you get it," etc. Since biosph-l is a mix of activists, scientists, management/regulator types and students with other netizens thrown in, some groups have a low threshold to what they see as pointless b.s. In this case, I weighed the costs to posters of a small amount of extra effort to post a reply to the list (e.g., cc:listaddress) against the damage to the list of driving off some very valuable participants. I really didn't have to think long and hard. The only bitching I got came from one fellow who also believed that my sole reason in life was to make his life easier in using biosph-l. I offered to give him the list if he'd run it properly, and he shut up. If a list has a fairly net-aware subscribership, if there have been no serious problems with traffic and nonsense postings, then of course the desirable thing is to make life as easy as possible for all concerned. If not: setting reply default to the poster of the message does help. As for hassles: if mailers are broken, get them fixed, or work around the problem. If people complain that something takes time to learn and figure out, then *perhaps* they have unrealistic expectations about the investment needed. Every time I visit a decent bookstore (and increasingly the midbrow ones as well) I'm amazed at the sheer variety of "internet" books for sale. Many are fluff or raw listings, but some offer a handle on things. What I would have given for something like them five or six years ago...There are more resources available to people who want to navigate the net and make productive use of it than ever before. There's some excuse for bewilderment but not for helplessness. -dave phillips