[WBEL-devel] Reply-to (was RE: rsync mirror...)

[Jimmy Kaplowitz]

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On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 11:12:51AM -0500, Hedemark, Magnus wrote:
> Yes, I needlessly got two copies of this message.  I'm subscribed to the
> list, so why should I get the message twice?  Because people are inherently
> lazy and will just do a Reply-All without fixing their recipient list.  If
> people can't handle the responsibility of managing their recipient lists
> when replying to an un-munged mailing list post, then we shouldn't even be
> having this discussion.  The headers should be munged as the evangelists of
> "pure headers" can't extend the common courtesy of cleaning up their
> outbound mail.

Some people actually like the extra copy. For example, for most of my
Debian mailing lists, I have them autofiled into a separate mail folder.
It's nice to know that, when someone replies to one of my posts, I will
get a copy in my main inbox to alert me of that fact. I agree that in a
lot of cases, it's annoying.

> IMNSHO, this is worse than top posting.  It's worse than bulk quoting.  And
> it can only be effectively stopped by munging the reply-to header.

Not true in the least. The Mail-Followup-To: and Mail-Copies-To: headers
are added by some mail clients, and they can specify your preferences
about this issue. I know that at least mutt respects the
Mail-Followup-To: header. Also, even without these additional headers
(which are not yet universally supported), many Linux mail clients allow
you to reply just to a mailing list with a special reply-to-list command
(in mutt it's 'L' by default). Mutt allows you to identify lists through
pattern matching in the config file, and I'd imagine some programs will
recognize the standard List-*: headers added by Mailman to all messages
on our list.  (The List-Id: header, incidentally, is quite useful as the
best way to filter based on a mailing list run by software that adds
these headers.) In other words, use a more sophisticated mail client!
:-)

Another argument against munging the Reply-To: header (yes, I am against
it) is very simple. The vast majority of Linux, open source, and free
software lists do not do it, and anyone from those communities who posts
to our lists would be confused by the departure from the community
netiquette. That's worth avoiding, methinks. Also, what about those
times when one does want to ensure that certain third parties (who might
not be subscribed to the list themselves) are always CCed for all
messages in a given thread or subthread? This happens more often than
you think, and a Reply-To: header would interfere with this.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy@kaplowitz.org / jimmy@debian.org

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