On 2018-02-05 at 08:58, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > On 2018-02-05 08:40:27 -0500, The Wanderer wrote: > >> On 2018-02-05 at 08:11, Vincent Lefevre wrote: >>> You should set up a "Mail-Followup-To:" for that. This is >>> entirely your problem. >> >> That does seem to be the trend and position of the world, >> especially in recent years, but I disagree as a matter of >> philosophy. >> >> A mailing list whose subscribers can post to it is a discussion >> forum. > > However, for debian-user, non-subscribers can also post. So, for > mail without a "Mail-Followup-To:", it may be difficult to do the > "right" thing automatically. Even for replies to messages posted by non-subscribers, replying back to the forum by default is still the right thing to do. If the poster wants to receive replies, it is the poster's responsibility to do something to cause that to happen. That can take the form of subscribing, or of setting mail headers, or of saying "please CC me on replies", or simply of reading the replies in an online archive or mirror of the mailing list. If the poster does not do such a thing, then it should be presumed that the poster does not care about receiving replies. >> Replies to a message which was posted to a discussion forum should, >> by default, go back to that forum. If the poster wants the replies >> to go somewhere else, it is that poster's responsibility to >> indicate this fact, whether by message headers, signature comments, >> explicit statements in the body of the message, or some other >> means. > > I would say that to avoid ambiguities, in any case, the poster > should use a "Mail-Followup-To:" to indicate what he wants (unless he > doesn't care). A: I do not see any way to achieve what I want via this mechanism. (Especially given the variety of mailing lists to which I subscribe, and the lack of ability to specify automatic headers dynamically that way in any mail client with which I'm familiar.) B: That would not bear on the question of the default. The default is what happens when no special action is taken. If I have to take action (in the form of ensuring that that header is set) to cause the desired behavior to occur, then the desired behavior is not the default. > Just like for "date -d", ambiguities should always be avoided. It is part of my philosophy that unintentional ambiguity is anathema, but I don't see the ambiguity here. This is just a case of disagreement about what the default should be; each possible default is perfectly self-consistent and produces unambiguous results as far as I can tell, it's just that they aren't compatible with one another. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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