Note, I am not subscribed to mailman-developers@python.org, so this message may or may not get through to that list. I did CC everyone interested so far, though (I think), in this subthread.

On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 16:03 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

Reply-To set to me. Please verify that your replies are going to the intended place.

Indeed, Ctrl+R does reply to you.

Michael B. Trausch writes:

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In any case, it's off-topic, and unless others here are interested in the discussion, or there's a chance that the ML config would be changed, it's probably best just to drop it altogether.

I'm not sure where discussion will take place. Not here, possibly Mailman Developers ML, most likely wiki.list.org. Drop me a line and I'll make sure that you're notified about the new venue. It will probably be Saturday or so.

I assume that since we've already gone there, that's where it'll be. I assume I'll know shortly after I hit C-RET if I need to be subscribed there, too...

As long as I'm here, let me respond.

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I've seen that argument before; it's fine, but the ideal situation is impossible to achieve (some form of complete consistency amongst all mailing lists globally).

The draft RFC admits that. It's not a panacea, it's a path forward.

The problem to date, AFAICT from the litter on the path to RFC 2822, is that a lot of people want a way to indicate that responses SHOULD go to the list (of course you can't *force* them to go to the list). They have insisted on coopting Reply-To and Mail-Followup-To for that purpose because they are existing headers that many MUAs already respect. This breaks their usage as defined in the RFCs, so the cooler heads have refused to sanction such usage. They are for the *author* to indicate where personal replies and public discussion, respectively, should be conducted.

The upshot is that there is no RFC-sanctioned way for a list to say "please respond here", and no way at all that doesn't usurp *both* the author's and the receiver's options.

The best way to do this far simpler, I think:

1. Mailer software should reply to From or Reply-To as currently.
2. ML software should set Reply-To _UNLESS_ there was _already_ a Reply-To. Then, Reply-To isn't truly broken, because the author has control over it still, and it just defaults to the list.

This manages to make things work 95% of the time for 95% of the people. I know that people far less technical than myself expect the behavior above. I don't know about ML's and whether or not they'll respect and author-set Reply-To if one is set in the ML configuration, but I've never tried, either; I do know that of the lists I'm on, the Bazaar ML and one other one (don't remember right now which one) are the only two that actually don't set Reply-To.

Now, RFC 2822 says that From, Sender and Reply-To are "originator fields". It also says this:

The intention is to fix that. I already have agreement in principle from the Mailman boss to implement for that list manager. I will provide an implementation of my algorithm that can be used in Emacs MUAs. I'm sure I can get VM and MH-E to adopt it, and almost sure Gnus will. The KDE KMail guy has expressed interest. Both seemed to think my proposal is actually novel, but I certainly will check the IETF archives in order to frame it properly in existing discussion.

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On the topic of the discussion, though, what is better for all is a default behavior that is correct, say, 95% of the time for 95% of the people.

My algorithm gives that by default. The draft RFC gives a way for a mailing list to either insist on public followup or to strongly discourage it.

-- Blog: http://mike.trausch.us/blog/ Misc. Software: http://mike.trausch.us/software/

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” —Michelangelo