austin-group-l@opengroup.org said: | Replies should work the same way they used to[*]. If you use your email | client's "reply all" function
First, see how that citation of your message looks when I don't go and manually fix it, that's because the address used is that from the From: field - which is who sent the message (who authorised it to be sent, usually but not always the same person). Or that is the way it is intended to work. And thanks for the tutorial on how to use e-mail - but my e-mail client doesn't have a "reply all" function, I don't want it to, the notion of just "reply" vs "reply all" is absurdly simplistic. What I have is "reply" which by default replies to the Reply-To if there is one, otherwise the From+To+Cc list (more or less the equivalent of what you consider to be "Reply All" I assume). That's the way it should work - the Reply-To field is the one you are supposed to use to suggest to me where you prefer to have replies sent (as in, just send to the list, I will get a copy that way", or "send to me and the list, as I'm not on this list", or "reply just to me, if anyone else indicates an interest in my bizarre problem, I'll summarise replies once I have a solution" -- or "send replies to me and my supervisor", or various other possibilities) - all managed by placing the list of desired addresses in the Reply-To header, before you send the message. My e-mail client is set up (properly) to respect that request by default. Once the default list of addresses has been established, I then get to modify it as I see fit (after all, the reply is a message I am sending, I get ultimate control over to whom my message is sent) - I can add or delete addresses from what was established by default. When I think it is likely to be necessary to do that (sometimes when the sender of the message isn't e-mail sophisticated, or is stuck behind a crappy interface which doesn't allow the header fields to be set as desired) I do it, but I don't usually when replying to messages on lists - normally those "just work" adequately - if the sender set a Reply-To header, then they're asking for a particular reply strategy, and unless I have a very good reason, I comply with their request. That is, until this nonsense started - now this list (and one or two others which adopted the same strategy - perhaps because they're using the same list software) I have to remember to adjust the destination address fields for every reply I send, as the default is almost never what the sender requested, but instead this noise from the list. austin-group-l@opengroup.org said: | This DKIM/DMARC mail message header mixing approach always makes me nervous That was really stef...@sdaoden.eu who said that, but again, the From field, which indicates that (or should) has been perverted. I suppose I could have it include the entire From field, so the citation would have been "Steffen Nurpmeso via austin-group-l at The Open Group" <austin-group-l@opengroup.org> said: | This DKIM/DMARC mail message header mixing approach always makes me nervous but that gets kind of overbearing, and what's more, misstates what Steffen's e-mail address is. I could just use the "human name" part (which in this case would still be annoying) but I prefer to use the e-mail addr, as that is something others can use to communicate, just the human part can be informative, but is otherwise useless. The way it is done is totally broken - it could have been much simpler, e-mail has all the header fields required for this. The Sender field is exactly on point - it indicates the origin of the message, should that not be the From: field (which is really on whose behalf the message was sent). For a list like this, setting the Sender to be the list address would make sense - as it is the list doing the sending to all of the recipients, as requested (authorised) by the person who authorised (and usually) sent the message to the list (the From field). Then the From and Reply-To fields could be left alone. Of course, to be useful, that would require Google (et al) actually doing what the e-mail standards say they should do, and basing their test for "did this e-mail originate at an authorised sending host" based upon the Sender field if there is one (and From if there is not - Sender is not included if it would be identical to From). I kind of doubt that they do that - and they certainly never will if everyone simply caves in to their broken requirements, severely limiting the functionality of e-mail in the process. kre
