Folks,
As a member of the Council Listserv committee, I
will communicate your comments regarding the reply-to setting to the committee
at tomorrow's (Tuesday's) Council meeting. Until then, I cannot speak for the committee.
Speaking for myself, I will note that there's
no pleasing everyone. For every person who thinks hitting the delete key
is no problem, there's another who feels it's onerous for any number of
reasons. One of the largest complaints the committee heard before the
change was the complaint about noise, and the reply-to sender is a fairly well
recognized solution to that problem. The problems with reply-to sender are
also well recognized.
I'd like to remind people that the Web interface to
the messages is a very useful tool. If you haven't seen it, surf over to
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html.
You may need to create a user password to see the list, but it's a snap; you get
a confirmation notice emailed to you (which usually arrives within a minute or
two), at which point you can surf and post from the Web interface. This
interface gives you the option to pull the content when you want it, rather than
having it pushed on you through your mailer. The index makes it
particularly easy to browse and click on only those messages you're interested
in.
I'd also like to try to expand this conversation a
bit. (The timing may not be the best, as many people will be away from their
email while at the annual meeting, and I -- for one -- will be so tied up with
the meeting that I will not be able to follow this thread closely. But I
will use the Web interface to review it carefully when I get back, and I hope
that it will continue for a couple of weeks so that those at meeting will have a
chance to participate.)
The reply-to setting may be something of a red
herring. One poster observed that the quality of the list, in his/her
opinion, had been declining for some time before the reply-to setting was
changed. I constantly hear complaints about the quality of the list, that
the list is a waste of time; I've been hearing that for long before I was
on Council and long before SAA took any responsibility for the list.
What I believe to be the more significant questions
are, What needs to happen to make this list more valuable to you? and How
can we implement those changes? I suggest looking
for non-technical (i.e., software) answers to these questions. Assume for
the sake of this discussion that all relevant replies go to the list and that
noise levels are acceptable. What would make the majority of the
profession want to participate in this list (even if participation is just
subscribing)?
The question of implementation is particularly
important. I can think of half-a-dozen ways to improve the list, but I
cannot think of who's going to do the work. For example, having a list
moderator would filter noise, but getting someone to moderate the list might
require a subscription fee to compensate that someone for what is a large amount
of work. Because the list is a bit anarchistic (I mean this in the sense that
there is no formal government, and that its success depends on the subscribers
rather than an authority), how can subscribers take responsibility for the
quality and success of this list?
I want to stress that in asking these questions I
am not trying to set up a dodge of the reply-to discussion. I will see
that the list committee seriously considers the concerns about the change of the
reply-to setting.
Richard Pearce-Moses
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