SEELANGS Administrivia - (was: Re: latest apologies for personal posting)

[Alex Rudd]

Dear SEELangers,

I'm well aware that I'm a week behind on replying to this.
Sorry.  Fact is, I can't even keep up with the lists I own
and take active part in.  Oh well.  Better late than never.

On Wed, 21 Feb 1996 13:42:53 -0600 Randolph J. Herber said:
>1. I make far more private responses to postings than I make public replies.

Doesn't mean everyone else does, too.

>2. A public posting that becomes unintentionally a private electronic mail
>   response causes no damage or embarrassment since you had intended that
>   member among others to receive the message.  Conversely, a private
>   electronic mail response that unintentionally becomes public can be
>   quite damaging or embarrassing to any or all of the sender, the intended
>   receipent or some third party..

But a public posting that becomes unintentionally a private
electronic mail response will not have been saved by the
original sender and the recipient will not know how to Forward
it back to the list and it will never be seen because the
original sender will not want to spend the time composing a
post he/she already composed.  This is a discussion list, not
an information or announcement list.

>3. I either know or have readily at hand the electronic mail address to
>   post an item to the mailing list.  I very frequently do not have the
>   same knowlege or access to the electronic mailing address of the poster
>   of the message to which I am responding.  Therefore, for I and for many
>   others, it is more convenient that the reply address be that of the
>   poster of the item rather than the submission address of the mailing list.

For you and for many others there are two other, better, LISTSERV-
based solutions.

First, if your mail program is such that it doesn't furnish you with
all the information SEELANGS sends it (such as the name and e-mail
address of the person sending the post), you can instruct LISTSERV
to insert a second mail header within the body of each message it
sends you containing that information that your mail program strips
(don't panic; it's only 4 extra lines of text).  To take advantage
of this feature of LISTSERV, send e-mail to:

LISTSERV at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

Put anything you want in the Subject line (or leave it blank) and
in the main body of the text put the single line:

SET SEELANGS DUALHDR

That's your first option.  Secondly, assume you do know the name
of the sender but you lack his e-mail address.  Again, LISTSERV
to the rescue.  Send e-mail to that same address:

LISTSERV at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

and in the main body of the text put the command:

SCAN SEELANGS <search-string>

e.g.:

SCAN SEELANGS Herber

would produce the following output:

 * "Randolph J. Herber" <HERBER at FNAL.BITNET>
 * "Randolph J. Herber" <herber at DCDRJH.FNAL.GOV>
 * SCAN: 2 matches.

Knowing now that the problems to which you alluded are really not
problems at all, any future difficulty you have with the current
set-up may be your own fault.

>4. To borrow a phrase from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, ``I am not
>   amused'' when someone is publically damaged or embarrassed by an
>   unintentional posting.
>
>5. During my year and a half of being the electronic postmaster at Fermi
>   National Accelerator Laboratory, I received far more complaints about
>   FNAL people unintentionally posting private messages to a mailing list
>   than I received requests for determining how one posted to a mailing
>   that were set so that replies went only to the poster of an item.

First, I should say that I, too, am not amused by unintentionally-
posted personal messages on the list.  In fact, on my other lists,
personal messages posted to the list address are prohibited, and if
you do it, I set you to NOPOST (removing your ability to post) until
I have the opportunity to explain to you what you've done wrong and
until you can assure me you understand how to prevent a recurrence.
But as George Fowler alluded, I've got other things going on these
days and no time to do the same here on SEELANGS.

But Randolph... guess what else is prohibited on my other lists?
Wait.. I'll just tell you:  Including the entire original text of
the message to which you're replying in the response.  Did you know
that your last message to SEELANGS, the one to which I'm replying
right now, contained not one, not two, but THREE *entire* posts
in the body above your reply?  Now THAT is bad.  THAT does not
amuse me.  Why?  For one thing, people reading the list in DIGEST
format (and there are some, myself included) are forced to read
each of those posts three and four times.  For another thing,
every post to SEELANGS is archived, and our disk space has already
been entirely depleted on two separate occassions.  Luckily, we've
been allotted more of it, but disk space is a finite resource, and
anything people can do to slow or stop the archival of extraneous
text is appreciated.

That's not to say that quoting text is a bad thing, only that it
should be done judiciously, to provide context for specific comments,
and not willy nilly.

By the way, if you all *really* wanted SEELANGS to be moderated
prior to its moving wherever it ends up moving, just find me a
moderator who's willing to do the work.  I can set up a moderator
while remaining list owner.  No problem.  But it is a lot of work.
Trust me.  A lot.

(Randolph and others will note that I've altered the "Reply-to:"
tag in the header of this message to point back to my own address
and not the list's address (something anyone can do if his mail
program will permit it).  If you want to reply to this message on
the list you'll have to alter the To: address prior to sending it.)

Thanks.

- Alex Rudd, list owner of SEELANGS
  seelangs-request at cunyvm.cuny.edu