This has apparently become a "reply to the list or not" issue
now. Let me tell you a tale...
Let me confess that back in the old days when the mailing list
was administered from Toronto I was in a curiously advantageous
position. The gap between a question going in and the mail
reaching the members was typically several hours. In the
meantime all you guys in the northern, western corner of the
globe had gone to bed and I had woken up to start tomorrow. I
would often have a few S questions waiting and if they were of
general interest I would often post a short answer, (well, mostly
short...) to the list. Then I would go to bed and whey you guys
back down there had finally woken up for the day you would see
the question and an answer as if they had appeared just about
simultaneously, by magic it seems.
Now that the gap between submitting and receiving is down from a
few hours to the order of milliseconds the boot is on the other
foot. Now I wake in the morning to see questions and answers
together. Now when I read a question and think I have something
useful to say I often send a personal reply to the questioner,
only to find the same answer often accidently copied to the list
several times over when I look further down my in-tray. Oh well.
More seriously, I think the personal reply and summary to the
list method is working mostly pretty well, but occasionally I
think that replies to the list still have a useful place,
particularly if they touch on wider issues that are timely and
might be of general interest in themselves.
Here is my .signature, by the way, just for Scott... :-)
--
(The following contact details become official on 1 May 1999, but
the email address works now and may be used from now on.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Venables, Statistician, CMIS Environmetrics Project.
Physical address: Postal address:
CSIRO Marine Laboratories, PO Box 120,
233 Middle St, Cleveland, Queensland Cleveland, Qld, 4163
AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA
Telephone: +61 7 3826 7200 Email: Bill.Venables@cmis.csiro.au
Fax: +61 7 3826 7304
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was distributed by s-news@wubios.wustl.edu. To unsubscribe
send e-mail to s-news-request@wubios.wustl.edu with the BODY of the
message: unsubscribe s-news
|