There, I just hit "reply to all"! I must say that I agree with Sherry. Bottom line, there are two ways to approach this: (1) You can set the default to reply to the individual and hope that everyone thinks to hit reply to all when they respond with genealogical information, or (2) you can set the default to reply to all and hope that, should someone have personal info to share, they will delete the list address from the reply. I think the chances of people remembering to do either are probably about equal. However, since the vast majority of responders will be responding on topic with genealogical info that could be useful to many individuals, it would be better to set the default to reply to the entire group. The instances of people responding with really personal info that they would not want the entire list to see are much less frequent. (And, once they've done that once, they will have learned not to do it again!) To me (and, boy, this is wishful thinking!), it would be much more useful if people focused on properly adjusting the topic in the subject line and adding name, location, and date info on a regular basis. That would allow people to easily delete emails that are clearly not relevant to them without their having to read the entire thing. It would also catch the eye of busy people who really do have something to add and might otherwise have missed the email. :>) Ava -----Original Message----- From: Sherry Cook [mailto:sherrycook@insightbb.com] Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 5:33 PM To: TNWASHIN-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [TNWASHIN-L] Let me see if I understand the discussion on automatic reply! Gary06074@aol.com wrote: >If the information is worthy of the whole list, all participants here are >intelligent enough to do such. After all, aren't we all here to help and be >helped? > > Yes, Gary, we are intelligent. And yes, we are all here to help and be helped. The point is - it's not happening and my experience as a usability engineer tells me that it's largely a factor of the way the defaults are set up. Unless you can contribute to the intial request for information, you have no idea if you have any information to offer or not to a discussion. If the subsequent posts always go directly back to the original requester (as most obviously do on this list), the rest of us have no opportunity to either learn from the discussion or to contribute. (My point being that although the "Reply to All" option exists, as does the ability to change the recipient manually from the poster to the list, they are obviously not being used.) And yes, mistakes happen but I still don't believe they happen all that often. As I said, I'm on over 200 separate discussion lists and only 2 of them are set to reply to the individual - this one that doesn't get a lot of traffic and another one that does get quite a bit of traffic, but only from about 20 people out of over 600. 20-some-odd of those lists are genealogy-related discussion lists and every one but this one is set to reply back to the list. I've been on each of those genealogy lists for years and the problems you describe just aren't that prevalent (frankly I can't remember a problem on any of my genealogy lists, but of course it could happen). Those lists include the Rootsweb lists for Greene County, Unicoi County, Carter County, among others - all of which are directly analogous to this list. They just don't have the problems you describe. And you don't have to take my word for it - check out their archives at www.rootsweb.com. If we do have those problems, they are easy enough to take care of (we are intelligent after all, LOL). I would like to see the moderator set the default to reply back to the list for a trial period to see how we all like it. It can always be set back. Washington County is extremely important to US researchers and it's a real shame that this list is so underutilized. Respectfully, Sherry ==== TNWASHIN Mailing List ==== Visit Washington County TNGenWeb at http://www.rootsweb.com/~tnwashin/ Tour Jonesborough TN at http://www.rootsweb.com/~tncjones/

Anyone who is too stupid to determine what is useful to other list members and decide to whom it should be sent isn't much of a researcher. I administer several lists and I give my members credit for their intelligence on the matter. This ends my involvement in this discussion... last message.... G. Lee Hearl Authentic Appalachian Storyteller Abingdon, Va.