[Mailman-Users] A modest proposal: Reply-To munging considered *carefully*

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Reply-To set to Mailman-Users.  Please check your addressees when
responding.

I had the occasion to explain to someone about how Reply-To munging
operates on a mailing list, and revived a dormant essay as the page
linked below.  It turned into something that's almost ready to
submit to the IETF (to my inexperienced eye).  Executive summary of
the RFC:

1.  Mail-Followup-To would be useful for email, too, but the hint as
    to whether to reply (to author) or followup (to list) should be
    provided separately.

2.  A formal proposal of a new header field, Responses-To, whose sole
    purpose is to allow mailing lists conforming to RFC 2369 to hint
    to MUAs whether a reply or followup is usually appropriate on the
    list.

I've cross-posted to Mailman Developers because I'd like to solicit
the opinions of those folks about whether Mailman should implement
this draft RFC early in the process.  Concrete proposals are a ways
off, though.  Followup to Mailman Users, please.

What do people think?  Would it be possible to get this through the
IETF process, or is the whole Reply-To/Mail-Followup-To snafu too
deeply embedded in Internet culture for it to be worth the effort?
I've linked directly to the RFC part.  Background and some of the
rationale is at the top of the page, but it's a familiar story to
Mailman users, I think.

http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Blog/Software/ReplyToMungingConsideredEmCarefullyEm#an-rfc

Note: it bills itself as a blog and it's implemented as a wiki, but I
haven't thought at all about blogspam, so it's locked down -- no
editing and no comments.  Sorry!