[Mailman-Developers] Reply-To munging: stop the madness

[Joseph Knapka]

See, this is exactly the sort of traffic I wish to see the end of :-)
Can't... resist... posting... ...urgh... followup....

Marty Galyean <marty at penguinarts.com> writes:

> On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 17:52, Dan Mick wrote:
> > It *is* a per-subscriber option.  It's called "reply all".
> 
> <blog>
> 
> I'm not sure if it is in the spirit of a typical software 'option' if
> you have to decide and choose 'reply all' every time.  Usually 'option'
> means a setting you set and forget.
> 
> When cruising through my mail from various lists I inevitably forget to
> 'reply all' on lists where it is warranted and I end up sending a second
> time to the list in a separate email.

Hmm, I just did that with this message :-) Why doesn't this list
munge Reply-To???? You guys must be a bunch of real losers!!!!!!!!!!!
 
> What is really needed is for the user to be able to set on a folder by
> folder (or even sender by sender) default reply behavior in the
> *mailer*.  But this is no different than allowing them to specify it on
> the list server really, I suppose.

Yes, it is. Because expecting this functionality in a client means
waiting for every client to implement it; people choose their email
client for many reasons besides the useful array of "reply" functions
they display. Whereas implementing the option at the list server means
that everyone gets the benefit of the fuctionality, regardless of what
client they use. The list server is the most potent lever for
addressing this particular issue - and note that IMO, the *only*
reason to address the reply-to-munging issue *at all* is to make the
damned flamewars go away. So doing the simplest thing that can
possibly work, as opposed to the most elegant or most useful, is
called for. (Obviously, there are other listservers in the world
besides Mailman, but there are far fewer of them than there are email
clients. And Mailman seems to be well on the way to dominating the
market at this point; I think every list I'm subscribed to uses
it. But that's a totally subjective impression, and therefore probably
worth what you're paying for it, or maybe a smidgen less.)

[scissors of brevity]

Cheers,

-- Joe Knapka