I am on a list serve where people are complaining about everyone replying to the list instead of to the individual asking the question. I was under the impression that this was the whole point of a list serve … ? But someone said this:
“I believe “listserve” was designed for one person to ask a question and then for many people to answer directly to that person via direct e-mail. I don’t think it ever occurred to the designers that each person answering would want to share his or her answer with everyone, or that the average reader would want to see all of the answers so we could all benefit from the advice.”
Which is it? (I didn’t put this in General Questions, as it may be an opinion thing.)
I think this is up to the community served by the listserv.
For example, on my book club listserv, people ask questions for discussion, let’s say “what is your favorite character in X book and why?” Then it is expected that everyone will reply to the list so that we can all see the various responses, and they lead to future discussion.
Then, sometimes people have very specific questions. “Does anyone have a copy of book X I can borrow?” It’s fairly clear that no one besides the original poster is interested in the answer. Then, it is considerate to reply privately to that person.
Sometimes, someone posts a question that seems specific, such as “does anyone have a list of author X’s books in chronological order?” and then someone else pipes up and asks the list be shared with everyone, because it turns out that many people are interested after all.
I imagine that the “right” thing to do would depend a lot on the purpose and population of the list serve. Do people sign up because they like to participate in a lot of discussion? Or because they are looking for very particular information? Are the participants a social or informal group? Or employees of the same company?
I think it is funny that the person in your group thinks that the designers never intended so much sharing … I would say that my list serve is about 80% sharing and about 20% private responses, and that seems to match everyone’s expectations very well.
Thanks for responding!
It’s a group of people in a similar occupation (marketing) all over the US, who mainly take polls (What software do you use for contact management? Who uses which printer for graphics, and which one is best? etc.) and everyone replies. Kind of like the IMHO board, here.
From what I can tell, the people who don’t want to see the replies are in the minority, and nearly everyone agrees that they like to see the answers, and the point of this particular list serve is for all of us to share ideas on how to do our jobs better.