Re: bugs + rant + constructive criticism (long)

[phil@bolthole.com (Philip Brown)]

[ Craig Sanders writes ]
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:26:25AM -0800, Philip Brown wrote:
> > 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.

But the primary point of a mailing list is for discussion ON THE LIST.
Do you want to disagree with that?
So headers should be optimized for group discussion.
Replying to individuals is a secondary function.


> setting reply-to back to the list just makes it difficult (or in
> some cases impossible) to reply privately. ...
>.... 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.

So what, if the mailing software rewrites From: to have any reply-to
information from the original sender? Then the information is still
available.


> 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.

So your argument is
 "A mailing list is not a person, so it can't use reply-to:".
Bad argument.

[http://faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html]

rfc822, section 4.4.3, EXPLICITLY MENTIONS 
"text message teleconferencing" groups 
  (eg mailing lists) as potential users of the reply-to header,
expressly for the purpose of having "reply" direct email to the list!!!!

And finally, example A.3.3 EXPLICITLY shows that "reply-to" is
NOT exclusively for "who wrote the message". It is for
"Where do you want replies to normally go to"