On 03/08/12 21:32, Walter Prins wrote:

Well normally I expect emails from a list (being the direct sender),

But there is no concept of 'direct sender' in email. All emails bounce around the internet via innumerable mail relays before arriving. The only thing email protocols care about is the original sender. Reply sends it back to the originator. Reply All sends it to all recipients plus the original sender.

So if a mailing list sends me an email,

The list never sends you mail.
The list only forwards mail it receives.
It's only a slightly specialised form of mail relay or proxy.

Yes... most of the ones *I* use don't.

:-)

nevertheless seems a less than ideal setup choice for this list given
that the default behaviour caters for the minority use-case;

But my default behaviour is to always use ReplyAll unless I specifically want to talk to the sender only. It's how I reply to all of the emails I receive both at home and at work. And that's how all the people I work with operate too. So the list works exactly like the mails I receive from my friends, my colleagues and lots of spam too! :-(

collective discussion.  Taking tutor problems off list is generally
counter productive both for the people being helped and others who may

True but I often want to personally thank somebody who has answered a question well or maybe solved one of my issues by explaining something in a new way. It's not relevant to the OP or discussion and would simply clutter up the list. In those cases I use reply. In every other case I use ReplyAll, because that's what I always do for all email unless there's a reason not to.

The problem with the reply goes to list approach is that replying to a poster individually becomes very tedious - you have to manually remove the unwanted addresses.

Of course the best solution is to have a client that recognises lists and automatically responds appropriately, mutt and Thunderbird both seem to do that well.

Anyway, I'll go back to leaving this issue alone again now.  Have a
good weekend everyone :)

Its a debate that's been raging for as long as I've been on the list - nearly 15 years :-)

--
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/

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