Date:         Wed, 27 Jul 2005 12:53:35 -0700
Reply-To:     John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: John Wallace Info
In-Reply-To:  <1b85fa6a0507270941490eb835@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

> Every other listserv I belong to also allows me to reply directly to
> the list by just hitting the reply button.  This list requires me to
> hit reply to all button, then remove the individual poster's email so
> that I don't send duplicate responses--why is that?  It's really
> annoying.

Many lists keep "reply to" set to the sender to prevent the list
itself from getting "John Wallaced". If the "reply to" defaulted to
"vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com", all those "John Wallace" bounces would
not only end up in EVERYONE'S mailbox and in the list archive, but
could potentially create a "John Wallace flood" when the list tries to
distribute the JW message to JW and it responds with a NEW JW message.
Yahoo Groups' mail list  software (being run by a LARGE corporation)
is fairly sophisticated and can spot such conditions and stop them
automatically. I'm not sure the "Listserv" brand software the Vanagon
list uses has that capability. Listserv is a fairly old program (as
you can tell by its name, a holdover from the days when there was an 8
character filename length limit) and though the current version is
14.(something) and it probably does all sorts of neat tricks, I don't
think the Vanagon list is running the lastest version.