Note, I am not subscribed to mailman-developers@python.org, so this message may or may not get through to that list. I did CC everyone interested so far, though (I think), in this subthread.
On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 16:03 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > Reply-To set to me. Please verify that your replies are going to the > intended place. Indeed, Ctrl+R does reply to you. > Michael B. Trausch writes: > > In any case, it's off-topic, and unless others here are interested > > in the discussion, or there's a chance that the ML config would be > > changed, it's probably best just to drop it altogether. > > I'm not sure where discussion will take place. Not here, possibly > Mailman Developers ML, most likely wiki.list.org. Drop me a line and > I'll make sure that you're notified about the new venue. It will > probably be Saturday or so. I assume that since we've already gone there, that's where it'll be. I assume I'll know shortly after I hit C-RET if I need to be subscribed there, too... > As long as I'm here, let me respond. > > > I've seen that argument before; it's fine, but the ideal situation is > > impossible to achieve (some form of complete consistency amongst all > > mailing lists globally). > > The draft RFC admits that. It's not a panacea, it's a path forward. > > The problem to date, AFAICT from the litter on the path to RFC 2822, > is that a lot of people want a way to indicate that responses SHOULD > go to the list (of course you can't *force* them to go to the list). > They have insisted on coopting Reply-To and Mail-Followup-To for that > purpose because they are existing headers that many MUAs already > respect. This breaks their usage as defined in the RFCs, so the > cooler heads have refused to sanction such usage. They are for the > *author* to indicate where personal replies and public discussion, > respectively, should be conducted. > > The upshot is that there is no RFC-sanctioned way for a list to say > "please respond here", and no way at all that doesn't usurp *both* the > author's and the receiver's options. The best way to do this far simpler, I think: 1. Mailer software should reply to From or Reply-To as currently. 2. ML software should set Reply-To _UNLESS_ there was _already_ a Reply-To. Then, Reply-To isn't truly broken, because the author has control over it still, and it just defaults to the list. This manages to make things work 95% of the time for 95% of the people. I know that people far less technical than myself expect the behavior above. I don't know about ML's and whether or not they'll respect and author-set Reply-To if one is set in the ML configuration, but I've never tried, either; I do know that of the lists I'm on, the Bazaar ML and one other one (don't remember right now which one) are the only two that actually don't set Reply-To. Now, RFC 2822 says that From, Sender and Reply-To are "originator fields". It also says this: > > The intention is to fix that. I already have agreement in principle > from the Mailman boss to implement for that list manager. I will > provide an implementation of my algorithm that can be used in Emacs > MUAs. I'm sure I can get VM and MH-E to adopt it, and almost sure > Gnus will. The KDE KMail guy has expressed interest. Both seemed to > think my proposal is actually novel, but I certainly will check the > IETF archives in order to frame it properly in existing discussion. > > > On the topic of the discussion, though, what is better for all is a > > default behavior that is correct, say, 95% of the time for 95% of the > > people. > > My algorithm gives that by default. The draft RFC gives a way for a > mailing list to either insist on public followup or to strongly > discourage it. -- Blog: http://mike.trausch.us/blog/ Misc. Software: http://mike.trausch.us/software/ “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” —Michelangelo _______________________________________________ Mailman-Developers mailing list Mailman-Developers@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-developers/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9