Reply-To mailing list?

On Fri, Dec 4, 2020 at 9:40 AM David Ashby <delta.mu.alpha at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ah, that would explain why so many of the emails to this list were getting
> thrown into my spam folder before now. Leaving it as it is help
> alleviate that, right?
>

I had to tell Gmail that traffic sent to this list is never spam.  So far I
haven't been bothered, but it's annoying to get the big gray warning on
many (not all) messages.

> On Fri, Dec 4, 2020 at 8:30 AM orbifx ? <fox at orbitalfox.eu> wrote:
>
>> > Irrespectively of MUA, could we revert back to the setup pre November
>> 22nd, and fix the rest of the stack instead.
>>
>> I don't think the point for the change was understood here.
>>
>> When Mailman is set to assert the Reply-To header to "list", it will
>> invalidate the mail signature by many servers making others regard the
>> email as forged. This was a slip up on this list; other lists on this
>> server as set to not alter the Reply-To header.
>>
>
Quite apart from this point, the arguments of Chip Rosenthal's classic
"Reply-to Munging Considered Harmful" <
https://unicom.crosenthal.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html> are still as sound
as ever, though the problem of "brain-dead mailers" that don't support both
Reply and Reply All is probably no longer an issue.  I QFT his summary,
though I recommend reading the document in full:

Many people want to munge Reply-To headers. They believe it makes
reply-to-list easier, and it encourages more list traffic. It really does
neither, and is a very poor idea. Reply-To munging suffers from the
following problems:

   - It violates the principle of minimal munging.
   - It provides no benefit to the user of a reasonable mailer.
   - It limits a subscriber's freedom to choose how he or she will direct a
   response.
   - It actually reduces functionality for the user of a reasonable mailer.
   - It removes important information, which can make it impossible to get
   back to the message sender.
   - It penalizes the person with a reasonable mailer in order to coddle
   those running brain-dead software.
   - It violates the principle of least work because it complicates the
   procedure for replying to messages.
   - It violates the principle of least surprise because it changes the way
   a mailer works.
   - It violates the principle of least damage, and it encourages a failure
   mode that can be extremely embarrassing -- or worse.
   - Your subscribers don't want you to do it. Or, at least the ones who
   have bothered to read the docs for their mailer don't want you to do it.

For this list I will emphasize the next to last point.  I frequently screw
up and choose Reply instead of Reply All.  The recipient often asks me if I
meant to send it to the list, and one of us then does it: the situation is
fully recovered from.  Choosing Reply All in place of Reply cannot be
recovered from, and can have social consequences anywhere from temporary
embarrassment up to a "career-limiting move".

(For future reference, if you get an email from me beginning with "(Private
Message)" in response to a list posting it is truly private; if not, it is
me screwing up.)

In addition to Chip's points, I would add the weight of RFC 2822, "Internet
Message Format" (which didn't yet exist when Chip wrote):  "When the
"Reply-To:" field is present, it indicates the mailbox(es) to which the
author of the message suggests that replies be sent."  Mailing list
software is not "the author of the message".



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Long-short-short, long-short-short / Dactyls in dimeter,
Verse form with choriambs / (Masculine rhyme):
One sentence (two stanzas) / Hexasyllabically
Challenges poets who / Don't have the time.     --robison who's at texas
dot net
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