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From: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: news reader/poster change suggestion
Message-ID: <1406@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Date: Thu, 18-Jun-87 15:19:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulowell.1406
Posted: Thu Jun 18 15:19:18 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 15:07:53 EDT
Reply-To: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Lowell
Lines: 32

[right after I said "leave it to the site admins instead of
putting it into the news readers," I reverse myself with this one:]

There is a global change that I urge ALL news reader developers consider:

		Take out the Followup command.

What I mean is, in the case of 'rn' for example, the 'f' and 'F' keys
won't do anything (or get mapped to the 'r' and 'R' keys for compatibility).
Essentially, a reply is a reply is a reply.  After the user leaves the
editor, is finished with the article, etc, and the posting program asks
"send, edit, list, abort?" and gets a 'send' response, the posting program
then asks:

	Mail to the original poster or Post to the net (or Both)?

Why the difference, you ask?  I bet a lot of postings that are replies
would be mailed instead if the question was asked AFTER the reply had
been written.  Maybe not a LOT, but one a week would be in improvement,
and I don't think it would be too difficult to add to the posting programs,
although I haven't looked yet.

The 'Both' response might help drive two-person flame wars into e-mail,
since the person getting the reply wouldn't know it was also posted,
thus would send an e-mail reply also, and by the time s/he read the
same thing on the net, would feel that it's not worth replying to again.

Just a suggestion.  Am I too late for the new version of rn, Larry?

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.   page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}