OT: reply-to on mailing lists [Was: gnome-font-viewer]

Rob Chanter robc at nudepenguins.org
Mon Feb 7 09:29:12 UTC 2005


On Wed, 2005-02-02 at 16:56 -0500, Michael R Head wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 07:44 +1000, Daniel Saunders wrote:
> > 
> > p.s. - For some reason gmail automatically choose the lists email
> > address for replying to.  I don't know if this is a Gmail thing or a
> > Ubuntu-users thing, but I like it!
> 
> Some mailing list administrators instruct the mailing list software to
> set the message's 'reply-to' header, which causes that to happen.
> 
> There are differing opinions on whether this is good[1] or bad[2]. 
> 
> I happen to like it, since, as seen in your email, the reply-to headers
> can be combined, rather than overwritten (something that the 'harmful'
> crowd seems to harp on).

The fact that most list servers can be configured to respect or append
to Reply-To instead of overriding it sorts out one objection. The more
serious one is that reply that was meant to be public does no harm if it
just goes back to the poster. A reply that was meant to be private can
do more harm if it accidentally goes to the list, and it can't be made
un-public.

The best thing is to choose a MUA that understands lists. Evo's not bad,
but it doesn't go all the way.

(I won't say any more on that: I've no interest in listcopping).

cheers
rob






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