On 1/12/13 8:49 AM, Wietse Venema wrote: > Richard Damon: >> On 1/11/13 9:51 AM, Wietse Venema wrote: >>> Robert Moskowitz: >>>> On 01/11/2013 09:07 AM, Wietse Venema wrote: >>>>> Robert, please configure your mail reader to respect the REPLY-TO >>>>> header. I have asked you this before, and I think I will ignore >>>>> your email until you play by the same rules as everyone else. >>>> Sorry about that last transmission. >>>> >>>> Your request would be reasonable if every list I am on worked the same way. >>> If your mail program requires human effort to respect the Reply-To: >>> header, then you are using the wrong mail program to participate >>> on a mailing list. I will ignore your posts until that is fixed. >>> >> Wietse, >> I believe that the poster was trying to explain a human engineering > Stop whining. Use software that is competent at handling mailing > list correspondence. It's not rocket science. > > Wietse > I do, and I wasn't whining.
I was pointing out that software that is "competent" at handling mailing list isn't necessarily as common as might be liked, and in fact software can be fully standards compliant and not handle mailing list well. In fact some of the most commonly used MLMs and MUA's do NOT implement the processing needed to be "competent", and this lack has impact on the usage of those that are, to help correct for this. First, RFC 2369 which defines the List-Post header, which is what defines the protocol to allow for the "Reply to List" option, only places the Generation and Use of the header at a SHOULD level of requirement (not a MUST), add to that the the whole of RFC 2369 is only "Standards Track", and not a "Standard" give email programs and mailing list reasonable amount of liberty in the processing of this header. In the ideal world where all MLM and MUA were RFC 2369 compliant, list usage would be simple, you get a message from the mailing list, to reply back to the list you use the "Reply to List" operation, and to make a reply just to the original poster, your press "Reply". When you need to allow for non-compliant software existing, things get more complicated. Since the current state of art includes the fact that there are many people with MUAs that do not support a "Reply to List" like feature, and that there also exist a number of Mailing List Managers that do not fully support RFC 2369, we run into the problem that people get trained to not always do the right thing. Without a "Reply to List" option (either because it isn't supported by the MUA, or because the list doesn't add the needed List-Post: header), than the user's best option for replying back to the list is to use the "Reply All" feature. Even if your MUA supports "Reply to List", enough other lists do not, that the social engineering to use "Reply All" is strong, especially if the MUA makes that an easier choice. I will note that even for this list, there is the encouragement to use "Reply All", as it is set so that "Reply" just goes back to the original poster, unless they have specifically set Reply-To:, and it is an unfortunate situation that for "Reply All" there is no way to tell (for this message) that the Reply-To field is supposed to be the proper address for replying to the original poster as well as to the list. If the list was configured to set Reply-To to the list address, then "Reply" would work to go back to the list (and Reply-All + removing the list email address would be needed to reply back to the poster, losing the ability of them to use a Reply-To address). If you really don't want to get private replies to list messages, I would suggest doing it the "normal" way, set up an alternate email address that you post from which is set to bounce all email received. This email address would need to work initially to confirm the subscription, and would then be set to be subscribed with mail delivery disabled. You then read from another email address which is normally subscribed. -- Richard Damon
