nanogui: Reply-to munging
Subject:
Reply-to munging
From:
Alex Holden ####@####.####
Date:
20 Jul 2005 22:20:37 +0100
Message-Id: <94ED1FEE-7B69-4B09-B1D0-ACAB66B5BAA5@linuxhacker.org>
On 20 Jul 2005, at 20:20, Alexander Stohr wrote:
> (why does that list always reply to individuals...? that bugs me.
> *gg*)
Since I've just gone through this on the GNUPIC list that is also
hosted on this server, I should point out that I'm open to the
possibility of enabling reply-to munging if most people on the list
want me to do so.
To summarise the situation, reply-to munging is something which most
mailing lists now do in order to work around the problem that very
few mail clients have a "reply to list" feature. Typical mail clients
only have "reply to all" and "reply to individual" options. Without
reply-to munging (the way the list is currently configured), the
former replies to the list address, the sender, and anybody else who
was CCed; the latter replies just to the sender. With reply-to
munging turned on, both options only reply to the list address. This
can cause embarrassment because it makes it easy to accidentally
reply publicly when you meant to reply privately. It can also cause a
slight problem if somebody is using the reply-to header for its
intended purpose (telling people that personal replies should go to a
different address than their From address), but that is fairly rare.
Despite the problems, many people prefer reply-to munging to be
turned on because most of the time you do in fact want to reply only
to the list address, and reply-to munging makes that the default
behaviour. If your mail client has a "reply to list" feature, then
reply-to munging doesn't buy you anything because you can reply just
to the list address with no more effort than replying just to the
sender or to everybody. Unfortunately that feature never materialised
in the majority of mail clients (don't ask me why; perhaps the
authors thought people wouldn't understand what it was for). So for
the majority of people, who are using mail clients with no "reply to
list" command, reply-to munging would save them a bit of effort each
time they reply to a message on the list.
--
------------ Alex Holden - http://www.alexholden.net/ ------------
If it doesn't work, you're not hitting it with a big enough hammer
