This Mailinglist

[Martin Schmitz]

CB schrieb:
> Simon Ekstrand wrote:
>>My only reply in this semi-religious thread.
>>http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
> 
> You know, I've never even seen this discussed on a list where reply-to 
> was rewritten back to the list. The fact that it only comes up in this 
> list rather suggests to me that it's not 'religious' (ideologues tend to 
> like to hear their own voice on their beloved topic  whereever 
> possible!), but just a matter of practical annoyance.

This is really funny. I'm subscribed to a lot of mailing lists for
years, mostly about technical things like using software or developing
operating systems and such things, but also lists that announces parties
in my town and other stuff like that.

I have never ever seen a mailing list, where the list software adds or
changes the Reply-To header! It would be a really, really stupid thing
in my opinion. What if I want replays to an other address than the one
I'm subscribed with? Besides all the other problems described in the
document above. And nowhere other than here I have ever seen people
asking for the Reply-To header to be set.

The fact that *you* set Reply-To to the list on your decision is even
much more stupid - and very *impolite* also! If I'd wanted to send you a
private mail I would see my writing on the list surprisingly!

> I gave the article a very quick read, so I might have missed something, 
> but it looks to me like the biggest mistake that the author is making is 
> to assume that default list-answering behaviour is to   reply to 
> original poster as well as the list. I doubt if many people want this. I 
> certainly don't (as sender or recipient).

Therefor most modern mailers offer a third reply function:
reply-to-list. Either you have to configure once which folder holds
which mailinglist or the mailer itself interprets headers like
Mailinglist, Mailing-List, List-ID and so on. The result is that i can
choose (The keybinding examples are taken from Gnus):

r - reply to author   - sends a reply only to the address of the
                        original author of the message, either taken
                        from 'From:' or - if present - from 'Reply-To:'.

w - wide replay       - as above, but also sends the replay to all
                        addresses that appear in To: and CC:

f - followup (to the  - Sends the reply to the configured mailing list
    list), also known   (or the one taken from the headers of the mail,
    as 'list-reply'.    depends on your software).

Even Squirrelmail(!) does have this ability (but - unfortunatly -
mozilla doesn't - the only modern mailer I know which don't know about
list-reply).

Got the point? If I hit 'r' I want to send a personal, private email to
*you*. Directing this to the mailing list (really surprinsingly in your
case as it's not the default behaviour of this list!) is a really,
really bad thing. Please don't do it anymore!

Martin