On Sat, 22 Nov 2008, Steve Lamb wrote: > Chris Bannister wrote: > > Quite right, but why discourage CCing on an open list? I can see the > > point in not CCing on a closed list. > > For the same reasons. Whether the list is open or closed is irrelevant to > the harm that CCing people unbidden causes. A list being open or closed is > also irrelevant to the fact that it is incumbent on the sender to ensure they > receive replies, capable of finding replies or requesting copies if they > cannot fulfill the previous two trivial tasks.
Actually, to be very blunt: CCing people is absolutely the only way to deal with massive ammounts of email and very-high-traffic lists when you *care* about not ignoring email that you should have read. If you want an example of a CC policy radically different from Debian's, take a look at the development mailinglists for the Linux kernel and all related projects. There, the policy is that you are to *always* CC everyone that should (or might even remotely need to) get an email, in addition to sending it to the lists. Otherwise, the chances that such an email will be lost in the ocean of stuff, or never reach the right people. IMO the truth behind the CC policy in Debian lists is that it is the policy not to do so for a LONG time now, and a lot of people is bothered by CCs, so they resist any such changes (note: I am NOT judging whether they're right or wrong for doing that, if one could even classify such an issue in that way). IMO, the reason many people are bothered by the CCs is that the typical DM, DD and Debian user just plain don't *care* about stuff from debian-user/-policy/-private/* bothering him all the time. He'd rather ignore it completely until he decides to read that ML folder, if ever. Which is why we *DO* CC people directly every time it is clearly their problem/fault/responsibility. We have entire systems to make sure people can ask automated tools to add them to such "cc's", even. But that certainly doesn't cover untargeted ML posts and replies to them. In the end, it boils down to the fact that most people have lame mail filtering setups that cannot sort delivery mailboxes in the right priority and do proper destination-based duplicate supression (so that you can get automated "if it is also destined to a Debian ML, file into the ML folder, and have any further duplicates supressed), and are not in any hurry to deploy one. -- "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
