Peter,
> could I suggest that people affix an automatically generated 'signature'
> to their e-mails which include their personal e-mail address
> This would enable a direct reply when it is not necessary to communicate
> to the whole forum.
Like you, I find the "default" behaviour of the forum annoying. When you respond
to a message, the reply is automatically addressed to the forum and contains
no trace of the originator's e-mail address. This means that "me too" and other
messages which would be best sent only to the originator are frequently
broadcast
to everyone. The result is a large reduction in signal to noise ratio.
There is a way to adjust your personal settings on the list server to alter the
behaviour -- for example so that "reply" goes to the originator and "reply to
all" goes to the forum. I did this last year but the settiings were lost when
the list server crashed a few months ago and I haven't got around to fixing it.
In the meantime the simplest approach is to copy the originator's e-mail address
(higlight and press Control-C) from the original message before pressing
"reply", then to paste it over the forum address (highlight the forum address
and press Control-V) in the reply message.
Best regards,
Nick
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