Thread hijacking

[Christopher Chan]

NoOp wrote:
> On 12/16/2009 10:16 AM, Alan McKay wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Odd <iodine at runbox.no> wrote:
>>> What's the point of a mailing list if private/direct replies should be
>>> the norm?
>> It seems to be the RFC purists who drag out this bit of nonsense from
>> time-to-time on most of the lists out there.
>>
>> The RFC clearly states that replies should be to the individual.
>>
>>
> 
> Can you please cite the RFC? Not disputing, just curious & would like to
> read it. Thanks.
> 
> 
> 

This should explain it.

http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html

Relevant portion if you do not wish to read the whole thing.

"In April of 2001, the IETF issued af new document, RFC 2822, which 
obsoletes RFC 822. In this new RFC, the author addresses the Reply-To 
header field in a few places, but the most relevant to this discussion 
is the following in section 3.6.2 "Originator fields":

     When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it indicates the mailbox(es) 
to which the author of the message suggests that replies be sent."


Another portion of the article for those who say 2822 is old and obsolete.

"How to specify where to post list messages

RFC 2369 specifies, in section 3.4, the List-Post header field:

     The List-Post field describes the method for posting to the list. 
This is typically the address of the list, but MAY be a moderator, or 
potentially some other form of submission. For the special case of a 
list that does not allow posting (e.g., an announcements list), the 
List-Post field may contain the special value "NO".

Modern mail list software sets this header field, or provides some 
mechanism for the administrator to set it."