OK I've checked the FAQ's and archives but can't find an answer to this dilemma. Actually I'm suppressed because I can't imagine I'm the only user that has had this issue.
So here it is. List members desire to be able to "reply-to" the list when answering a post by clicking their email client's "reply" button but at the same time see the original posters "from" address in the post. I have tried all types of configuration of the General Options "Reply-To: header mugging" but to no avail. Can a "from" and "reply-to" both be in the header?
John
On 4/2/2010 5:37 PM, John wrote:
So here it is. List members desire to be able to "reply-to" the list when answering a post by clicking their email client's "reply" button but at the same time see the original posters "from" address in the post. I have tried all types of configuration of the General Options "Reply-To: header mugging" but to no avail. Can a "from" and "reply-to" both be in the header?
Yes.
I really don't want to start another "reply to munging considered (harmful/useful)" debate, so all I will say is go to your list's General Options page and follow the "(Details for reply_goes_to_list)" link and read the page and as much as you want of the articles linked from the page.
To answer your question, to make replies go to the list, set reply_goes_to_list to "This list", and if you want to totally disregard where the poster thought a reply should go, also set first_strip_reply_to to Yes. If you have tried this, and it doesn't do what you want, then I don't understand what you want.
Personally, I prefer lists that do not mung reply to, and I tend to "reply all" even with MUAs that have a "reply list" function, because I don't in general know that the poster is even a list member, and even if the poster is a list member, she may be a digest member and appreciate getting a more timely response. Others have different opinions.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
John writes:
So here it is. List members desire to be able to "reply-to" the list when answering a post by clicking their email client's "reply" button but at the same time see the original posters "from" address in the post.
It would help if you explained precisely what you tried, and what the users are seeing that is inappropriate. You don't say whether any of the methods you tried allowed the users to reply to list as desired or not.
My only guess is that the real problem is that your users are using one of the Outlook family of (broken, non-conforming) MUAs, which helpfully stuff the contents of the (real) "Sender" header field into the (displayed) "From" line. There's a FAQ about that.
IOW, the inappropriate header display quite possibly has everything to do with users' software, and nothing to do with the Reply-To setting.
I have tried all types of configuration of the General Options "Reply-To: header mugging" but to no avail. Can a "from" and "reply-to" both be in the header?
Yes. That is exactly why the Reply-To header was designed: so that the apparent author can be different from the mailbox to which replies are directed. It all works quite well[1] ... if you don't use Microsoft software. Not much you can do about what your users use, but there you go.
Footnotes: [1] There are undesirable aspects to it; if you hang out on Mailman lists much you'll find that most of us don't like it very much. But doing without it is hard in environments where most of your users use poorly designed, poorly implemented, and unfixable-because-proprietary software. Gmail isn't much better than Outlook. :-)
participants (3)
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John -
Mark Sapiro -
Stephen J. Turnbull