On 11 May 2009 at 20:40, air-l-request@listserv.aoir.o wrote:

Message: 3 Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 09:25:34 -0400 From: Alex Halavais <alex@halavais.net> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Change of default reply setting on air-l To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <e0fe0c740905110625n71f690dfle9e0775ed700d1cc@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

May I ask a naive question? Several have suggested that changing the list to default to reply-to-author will have significant detrimental effects on the community, ranging from harm to ruin. Some have indicated that this is a well-researched fact.

I have done a study on the determinants of sending answers/providing information in academic emailing lists. While I was interested in other things, one of the many control variables indicates whether the default reply is to the group. This control variable has a significant positive effect on the likelihood of sending an answer to the whole list. The study compares the posting behavior of researchers in 47 academic emailing lists over a period of 2 months. For more details see Table 2 in the following: Matzat, U. (2009). "The Embeddedness of Academic Online Groups in Offline Social Networks: Reputation Gain as a Stimulus for Online Discussion Participation?" in: International Sociology, 24, 1: 63-92. Nevertheless I prefer the new setting (but not the sudden way it was implemented). Although I am on digest, it is hard for me to follow the discussions and only some of the postings are valuable to me. Best regards, Uwe