Etiquette comment and question

[Matthew Palmer]

On Sun, Jun 18, 2006 at 12:18:44AM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> On Saturday 17 June 2006 20:48, Matthew Palmer <mpalmer at hezmatt.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 06:22:08PM +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> > > If you hit "Reply" to a message that has a "Reply-To" header, the message
> > > will be addressed to the address given in that header, not the list.
> >
> > Then the MUA is working as expected.
> 
> Maybe so, but the whole point of mailing lists existing is to have an open 
> discussion. Standard user behaviour is to hit Reply to respond to a message. 
> The user should not have to think about whether it is a public list or a 
> private discussion; their response should go the the most appropriate 
> location by default.

You've identified the crux of the problem -- what is "the most appropriate
location" for a given message?  You can't identify one that works all
the time (or even a "vast majority" thing -- I get at least 30% of responses
to mailing list posts in private e-mail).

You, as the sender, need to work out what the most appropriate destination
for your message is, and you need to inform your MUA of where you want to
send the message -- by either hitting the Reply button (send to Reply-To: or
From:) or the Reply To List/Followup button (send to MFT:, List-Post:, or
known list-addresses in the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: headers).

There's also an even worse problem with overriding the Reply-To: header to
say "send it back to the list" -- you're breaking the known behaviour of the
header.  This violates the principle of least surprise, at the very least.

- Matt