Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:26:25AM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> [ D-Man writes ]
> > Try mutt and its "L" command.  The "L" command means "list-reply", aka
> > only send a message to the list, not to all recepients.  It also sets
> > a header flag so that other well-behaved MUA's don't send you an extra
> > copy of their replies since you will get it on the list anyway.
> 
> guess what?
> not everyone uses mutt.
> not everyone should.

mutt's not the only decent MUA around. there are other which work
properly.

> > "Reply-to" is meant to send a message back to the person who wrote
> > the first one, not to someone they wrote the message to.
>
> reply-to is meant to direct where you should send "replies to".
>
> And in the case of the debian mailing lists, you should "reply to" the
> list.

bullshit.

some replies should go to the list, and some replies should be private.
it's up to the person writing the reply to make that decision, not the
list software.

setting reply-to back to the list just makes it difficult (or in
some cases impossible) to reply privately. it provides no benefit
that can not be better achieved by either a) using a decent mailer,
or b) having a bit of a clue and editing the To, and Cc: headers
appropriately. however reply-to munging by list software does have the
serious disadvantage of replacing any Reply-To header created by the
original author of a message.

the Reply-To header exists for the *person* who originally sent the
message to be able to direct replies to their preferred destination. it
is not there so that mailing lists can screw with it.

craig

--
craig sanders