Re: IMPORTANT: Complaint about private answers in oracle-l list

On 31/03/06, Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco <juancarlosreyesp_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi :)
> I can be wrong,
>
> But personally I had seen several people who only answer offline about database topics, and I must say very good answer that should be done publicly.

If you look at the mail headers of a message on the list you'll see that the reply-to header has been set so replies go back to the person who sent it rather than the list.

If you look at the list's page on freelists.org you'll see:

"In general, the value density of threads is greatest if the initiator asks for responses off the list and then later posts a summary of those responses to the list."

I guess that's why the header is set. Personally I disagree with that reasoning, my expereience is that in general debate in public is more valuable and that the initiator rarely posts a summary (or if they do it's just a copy and paste of all the replies into a single mail with no removal of duplicates or inaccuracies). There's also the recruitment factor, if I see a list with lots of long threads I'm more likley to join than I am a list where apparently few if any questions get a response (because responses are off list and initators rarely post a followup).

Stephen

--
It's better to ask a silly question than to make a silly assumption.

http://stephensorablog.blogspot.com/
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