Andrew C. Oliver wrote:(nonbinding) +1 from me on putting the replyto to go to the list... .
Same from me. I think having the reply-to go to the list helps ensure discussions remain on the list, which I feel that helps the community as a whole.
My experience says exactly the opposite. Having a reply-to go to the list makes it hard to join communities or include people (by default).
This is especially on lists where people can post without being subscribed or on lists that have cross-posts. In fact, I might expect cross-posting to happen on the commons list more so than other lists (due to reuse across projects). Adding a reply-to makes cross-posting infeasible - not having it forces people to use followups (aka reply-to-all on some MUAs) not reply (aka reply-to-sender), which is correct.
For a good distinction between 'reply' vs. 'followup' and the harmful effects of Reply-To munging, please read:
http://cr.yp.to/immhf/response.html http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
For lists, you want a followup not a reply. A reply should only be sent to the original sender (i.e. default to private). A followup should be sent to everyone involved - hence 'reply to all' as the common alias for 'followup.'
As djb points out in the second link, if you don't want to get duplicate email, you should set Mail-Followup-To header in any email sent to the list address. This is an opt-in solution on your part, rather than a harmful dictated solution that has horrible failure conditions.
I've yet to see a rational argument for munging Reply-To other than 'it decreases my email traffic.' As I pointed out above, there are commonly accepted ways to solve that, but there is no way to solve the problem of dropped followups. -- justin
