[Mailman-Developers] ML replies

[Thomas Wouters]

[Greg, I don't know if you want to stay on the CC-list, nor wether you're on
the MM-devel list or not. Feel free to ignore this message ;-]

On Sat, Jul 01, 2000 at 12:16:48PM -0400, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:

> So there is clearly no header that will support the functionality we
> want.  And all this crud has been debated ad-nauseum in several
> working groups, MUA forums, etc. with no agreement.  I almost hesitate
> even bringing it up here.  Few of the discussions that I've read (in a
> morning's worth of archive surfing) even mention the situation we're
> trying to address.

Hmm. Personally, I've configured my Mutt to always do a group reply, and
sincerely dislike the Reply-To: header in python-checkins: I've been tempted
to reply to the person checking in a few times, and then stopped at the last
moment because the To: header of the new mail was set to the Reply-To:
header instead of the original author, and I didn't want to bother with
suspending the message and finding out the original authors' email address ;)

As said, I always do a group reply, and I always doublecheck the headers of
mail I send. For me, it'd be great if the Reply-To header were set to
"original@auth.or, list@reply.to", though I do not know if that would work.
There are always occasions where the solution you pick is not going to work
out, unfortunately.

For instance, at XS4ALL we communicate through lists a lot. In a
decent-sized discussion, about half of the participants keep the entire To:
line intact, replying to people on the list directly as well as to the list.
I'm really enjoying the Mailman 'max recipients' setting for exactly that
reason ;)

If Mailman was setting Reply-To: to the author, people would have to go
through some hassle to reply to the list. (Mutt has excellent support for
the author-reply/group-reply/list-reply nuances, but most people use
Eudorka or similarly worthless MUAs.) If Mailman was setting the
Reply-To: to the list, the same people would be replying to the list when
they intend to reply to a person. If you add both to the Reply-To:, they'd
always be replying to both, supplying people with double (or more, given
people who use several aliases at the same time. Yes, we have those ;-P)
messages.

It might help if Mailman set the Reply-To: to both the list and the author,
unless the author him/herself is on the list, in which case it'd be just the
list. But that would require Mailman to know all the aliases of a user.
Also, for some lists, it might be desirable to set it to just the author.
(Our 'important announcements only' list is always a target for replies,
despite numerous warnings. Another instance of Mailman To The Rescue ;)

But I seriously think the best solution to this problem is user-education,
not artificial intelligence in the MUA or in MM. If people take the 5
seconds it takes to look at the message headers, and the occasional 10
seconds required to change it to what they actually want, the problem is
gone. We have a nice device called a LART to take care of user-adjustment
<0.1 wink> and usually even the most stubborn users start taking care after
the 2nd or 3rd time.

Our-company-of-experienced-tech-wizards-and-newly-hired-(and-clueless)-suits-
    -and-marketeers-ends-up-a-good-test-bed-for-such-ideas-ly yr's ;)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>

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