Apologies for mangling my description of the problem. The senders with the hard-coded "Reply-To:" are not the ones complaining that their emails aren't going to the list, it's those who thought they replied to the list who complain that it went as a private message back to the OP.

IMHO, all replies to a discussion list posting should go back to the discussion by default. Any responder is free to change that for a particular reply, but the default should be to maintain the discussion.

If a poster really wants private replies, the author is free to ask for them, and may actually get a few. (Most will still go back to the list because it's sooo much trouble to change the "To:" header.)

These are folks who constantly hijack threads because they always start a new topic by hitting 'Reply' to whatever posting they just received...

-Chip-

On 1/29/2018 12:14 PM, Chip Davis wrote:

I am loathe to weigh in on this architectural design discussion, but it seems to ignore the PEBCAK effect.

I admin about a dozen _discussion_ Mailman lists as a mitzvah for various organizations I'm fond of, none of which are well-populated with computer scientists.  Exhibit A is the number of subscribers who have free email accounts at Yahoo, AOL, or bellsouth.net (who subcontracts their email processing to Yahoo).

I have a constant problem with well-meaning, but essentially ignorant, email users who, upon seeing a "Reply To:" field in their MUA's setup screen, dutifully fill it in with their email address.  Then they complain that even though they "replied to the list", their email went only to the poster.

That's why I have to "first_strip_reply_to", and it appears, will still have to do so in your new paradigm, Stephen.  You can't defeat ignorance, only battle it to a bloody draw.

I've been doing this for years, and it seems that the proliferation of POS (not "point-of-sale") cellphone email clients has made things exponentially worse.  They are more concerned with adding a button to to automatically order whatever is in highlighted text from Amazon, than with RFC's.

-Chip-

On 1/28/2018 11:43 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

...

Jordan Brown writes:

  > I want "Reply" to go to the author, and "Reply All" to go to the author, > the list, and any other To or CC destinations.  I simply can't > understand any other answer.  I don't understand why anybody feels a > need for "Reply List".

Your preference is noted, but you are definitely in a minority of those whose opinions I've seen over the decades.  Even those who use Reply and Reply All as you do (I do on this list, for example), usually have considered it suboptimal.  The preferences of list owners also should be respected, to the extent that replying users don't care.  The prevalence of reply-to-munging says that they (or perhaps a majority of their subscribers) want replies to automatically go to the list.

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On 2018-01-29 23:51, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

... [ Reply-To ] should have a checkbox "same as my

From address."

Oh, great, now I'll rreecceeiivvee eevveerryytthhiinngg ttwwiiccee..

Dima

On 01/29/2018 10:14 AM, Chip Davis wrote:

I have a constant problem with well-meaning, but essentially ignorant, email users who, upon seeing a "Reply To:" field in their MUA's setup screen, dutifully fill it in with their email address.

I too have seen people fill in the Reply-To in the MUA setup screen. - However I don't see the problem with it.

Recipients that hit reply (to a message that has not been modified) will go back to the author, via the From: or Reply-To:, particularly if the From: and Reply-To: are the same email address.

So I'm curious how the Reply-To: being set to the same thing as the From: causes any problems here.

Then they complain that even though they "replied to the list", their email went only to the poster.

It seems like you are describing two quite distinct things, 1) how the MUA is configured, and 2) where the replies to incoming messages go back out to. IMHO the way the From: / Reply-To: are configured doesn't matter or impact where replies to incoming messages go.

What am I missing?

-- Grant. . . . unix || die

On 01/30/2018 03:11 PM, Jordan Brown wrote:

There are those who would consider it a problem if your mailing list is (mis:-)configured to add "Reply-To: <list>" if there is no existing "Reply-To".

I don't see how the MLM's behavior (good / bad / indifferent) has anything to do with this being a problem. Specifically that the sample message has the Reply-To: set to the same value as the From:.

From: Grant Taylor <redacted@example.net>
To:  Mailman-Users <mailman-users@python.org>
CC:  REDACTED <redacted@example.com>
Reply-To: Grant Taylor <redacted@example.net>
Subject:  Testing...

Replies will be routed to the author, where replies to other messages will be routed to the list.

I assume that you are referring to messages coming out of the MLM, in comparison to messages that went directly to CC recipients and where their replies would go. I.e. if REDACTED replies to the above message vs a mailing list subscriber replying to the message they received.

I personally would try to avoid the above scenario, particularly when a discussion mailing list is one of the recipients. Or I'd like configure the Reply-To: to reflect the mailing list. (Of course that has it's own complications and failure modes.)

-- Grant. . . . unix || die

On 01/30/2018 04:53 PM, Jordan Brown wrote:

(that is, first_strip_reply_to=No, reply_goes_to_list=This List)

Then if user A sends a message to the list without a Reply-To, replies will go to the list, but if user B sends a message to the list with "Reply-To: <user-B>" replies will go to user B.

No. In the User A case messages from the list will have a Reply-To with the list address and replies (ignoring the pathological recent Thunderbird) will go to the list as you say, but in the User B case, messages from the list will have a Reply-To with both User B's address and the list address and replies will go to both User B and the list.

Of course, not all MUA's behave exactly the same with reply in cases where there are multiple addresses in Reply-To: but reasonable ones at least will address the reply to all the Reply-To: addresses.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

On 01/30/2018 06:46 PM, Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users wrote:

I wonder if that hints at another option when munging the From: (i.e. for DMARC reason).  Add the author (read: the original From:) as a Reply-To and set the mailing list as From:.  That would provide the original author information that many people want and (correctly) complain that From: munging hides.

The Munge From DMARC mitigations do essentially that. The message From: Joe User <user@dmarc.example.com> gets sent From: Joe User via Listname <listname@example.net> and has the original From: in either Reply-To: or Cc: depending on some settings according to these goals.

# MAS: We need to do some things with the original From: if we've munged
# it for DMARC mitigation.  We have goals for this process which are
# not completely compatible, so we do the best we can.  Our goals are:
# 1) as long as the list is not anonymous, the original From: address
#    should be obviously exposed, i.e. not just in a header that MUAs
#    don't display.
# 2) the original From: address should not be in a comment or display
#    name in the new From: because it is claimed that multiple domains
#    in any fields in From: are indicative of spamminess.  This means
#    it should be in Reply-To: or Cc:.
# 3) the behavior of an MUA doing a 'reply' or 'reply all' should be
#    consistent regardless of whether or not the From: is munged.
# Goal 3) implies sometimes the original From: should be in Reply-To:
# and sometimes in Cc:, and even so, this goal won't be achieved in
# all cases with all MUAs.  In cases of conflict, the above ordering of
# goals is priority order.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

On 01/30/2018 05:53 PM, Jordan Brown wrote:

[ Feh. My biggest MUA<->ML nuisance is that I don't have a way to force replies to use the custom From address that I use for that mailing list.

I'm assuming that you're talking about the address that address that direct replies go to.

My solution is to use a custom From: address (and occasionally to manually set the Reply-To: address) according to where I want the message (reply) to go to.

Yes, I use MANY different email addresses for this and similar reasons.

Grant, sorry for the dup. ]

I understand why. I don't hold my preference against you or others.

If your Mailman is configured so:

…

(that is, first_strip_reply_to=No, reply_goes_to_list=This List)

Then if user A sends a message to the list without a Reply-To, replies will go to the list, but if user B sends a message to the list with "Reply-To: <user-B>" replies will go to user B.

Okay. I think I'm starting to see the problem that you're alluding to.

It's not so much that people set a Reply-To: in their MUA in and of itself. It's the interaction of their settings in relation to MLMs configured like above.

I don't recall Mailman's behavior for reply_goes_to_list=This List to say for sure, but I would think that without first_strip_reply_to that Mailman would add the list as an additional Reply-To. Thus replies would go to the value of Reply-To /and/ to the list.

Some people would regard it as a problem that the replies to user B aren't directed towards the list.

I agree for discussion lists.

As you say, setting Reply-To to the same as From should have no effect, but that's not the case in this configuration. (Nor is it the case for Stephen's proposed "smart single reply", at the MUA end; in his proposal an explicit Reply-To beats List-Post beats From.)

(I would regard it as a problem that replies to user A *are* directed toward the list, but we're not talking about my preferences here; I'm just trying to explain why some people have a problem with a message that has Reply-To the same as From.)

ACK

Thank you for the explanation.

-- Grant. . . . unix || die