Reply-To munging summary (was: Bug in mailing lists; unfriendly to non-subscribers)

Bruno Wolff III bruno at wolff.to
Thu Jul 8 15:45:42 UTC 2010


On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 09:14:23 -0430,
  Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 13:29 +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > Also, people that are used to Reply-To munging can get used to
> > clicking "reply to all"; it's a matter of habit, but no functionality
> > is lost.
> 
> Why does no-one ever mention "Reply To List" as the proper way to, duh,
> reply to the list?

It isn't always the case that you want to reply to the list. When you want
that, then sure that is something you can do.

But you don't always know if people are subscribed or not and there may be
cases where people like getting a second message directly to them.

The proper way to indicate that you don't want separate direct copies in
addition to the list copy is to set an appropriate mail-followup-to header.
Then things work automatically and people don't need to guess your intentions,
remember them or notice them buried in the signature part of an email message.


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