On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 01:33:10AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> The bare fact is, that reply-to munging flamewar threads have
> occured on mailing lists since the first days that reply-to
> munging started happening. I must have been on at least 200 if
> not 500 mailing lists which have had this exact same flamewar,
> and not just once, but several times a year/month, and it creeps
> back up again occasionally. Not just on lists like this one
> which set Reply-to to the list, but also on lists that *dont*,
> where people are arguing that the list *should*.
I see the former all the time, as to you.
I've only ever seen the latter, maybe twice in 15 years.
I'd actually be fairly interested to see the relative percentages.
> Regardless of what *any* one person or 500 people think, this is
> a completely preferential and controversial issue. As
> controversial as abortion, capital punishment, vi vs. emacs, or
> whatever your favourite 50/50 split flamewar is.
Given safety (which is, admittedly, only an accurate description of the
benefit gained on certain types of mailing lists) versus convenience (which
is how *I* describe making easier for users something their *MUA* should be
making easier for them instead), it seems to be as obvious to me as the
smoking in bars issue -- for the smokers, it's only convenience, they're
gonna die of lung cancer *anyway*... but the non-smokers *weren't*.
It isn't just the convenience issue the smokers paint it as, and they're
trumped.
> The bottom line, is that 50/50 split flamewars (or any ratio from
> about 40/60 to 60/40 or so) end up almost always in the end,
> or at least 99.9% of the time ending with no list change
> occuring. Changing behaviour pisses off more people than it
> pleases, in particular if a list has had a certain behaviour for
> a long time.
*That* I can't argue with.
> As such, it is extremely pointless to demand that a given list
> should change it's policy on this issue, regardless of what
> datapoints you'd like to raise. You won't raise even a single
> datapoint that the list maintainers, and the majority of
> subscribers are not already fully 100% aware of. They just
> disagree with you, and are not likely to change their line of
> thinking no matter how much you disagree or how big of a flamewar
> you'd like to make about it. The best you can do, is agree to
> disagree and then move on to another topic - or unsubscribe.
Pretty sure that I did *not* advocate *this list* changing anything, Mike.
Go re-check the thread.
Was merely expressing an opinion.
> Regardless of how a particular mailing list is ran with respect
> to Reply-To, _anyone_ who is bothered by a given list's policy,
> can easily change it on their end to suit their own preference.
Well, not always. *This* list permits user set RT's to go through, but some
lists do *not*, and in that case, your assertion is incorrect.
> If you prefer Reply-To to point back to the mailing list, but the
> list does not do that, a simple procmail filter which moves any
> existing Reply-To to Cc, and puts the list address from From: or
> another header into the Reply-To will accomplish that (that's
> what I do).
Note that the issue here is "what does my message get to *list subscribers*
with a RT set to?" -- an item I *cannot* control if the list doesn't permit
it.
I don't mind having my opinion ignored on this topic on lists... but let's
all be clear, shall we?
> If you prefer Reply-To: never replying to the list, then have
> procmail strip out the Reply-To: header, and optionally munge
> From: or CC: to Reply-To to simulate putting it back.
Why would I want to bother? If I could run procmail, I'd just run mutt (or,
likely, one of the KDE mailers which probably also get it right) and not
worry about it.
> One thing is fairly certain however - you are very unlikely to
> to change long term list policies/preferences to your way of
> doing things via flamewar, and not likely via any other
> mechanism, so just deal with it, or unsubscribe.
Wasn't staring a flameware, Mike; not real pleased that you're trying to cast
me as *having* tried to start one...
and since the original question was "is there an automated way to make sure
the querent gets an answer" and *I've answered that twice, with an offer of
code and been ignored*, I reserve the right to be cranky for being bitched at
about the issue.
'k?
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Floridahttp://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274
OS X: Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows
-- Simon Slavin, on a.f.c
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