Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bionet!kristoff From: kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.general Subject: Re: What/who is bionet Message-ID: Date: 19 Sep 90 18:53:13 GMT References: <9009190312.AA08209@lash.utcs.utoronto.ca> Organization: GenBank Online Service Lines: 39 In response to Steve Clark, two points: In general I think it is a good idea for people to respond to the newsgroup, but there is one exception that I would note. If someone asks a straightforward, non-controversial question (Does anyone have a mail address for Joe Schulz at NYU?) there is no need for several responses to be posted publicly. It is better to just reply to the individual. This is obviously a judgement call, but it keeps noise down if one simply asks first "what are the odds that this info will be useful to someone else other than the original inquirer?" before deciding on the route for the response. This is one reason why newsgroups are not set up to automatically echo back to everyone. Unfortunately on LISTSERV mailers where reply to the group is the default one can raise the opposite objection that one has to readdress the response to send a private reply. The header that Steve received from Dave Steffen was somewhat obscure because the posting originated on USENET software at Steffen's site instead of starting out as a direct mailing to bionews@genbank.bio.net. This is an unfortunate effect of the current set-up and I will see if we can do something about at least labeling the newsgroups more clearly when they come from USENET to mail distribution (on USENET there is no confusion of course). Regarding changing the newsgroup default reply address, this is something that we have debated among the BIOSCI managers on several occasions. I am not going to repeat all of the pros and cons here (some have to do with technical issues and standards for the diverse communications software which comprises BIOSCI), but I can run this up the flag pole once again. Don't forget that the "reply all" default occasionally causes novice users great grief by publicizing something that was not meant for open consumption. -- Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net