Omar El-Domeiri wrote:
I vote to not munge the reply-to, and I would appreciate if those who think we should change the current behavior to read the following link: http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
Hey, it's Chip Rosenthal! Oh, wait. He's not President of Teh InturWeb yet.
That page says exactly what I, Big Mike, Jeff, you, and everyone else has been saying. "I think everybody should do this the way I do it, and I have Damned Good Reasons."
No less, and certainly no more. The referenced RFCs do deal with email in general and mailing lists in particular, and RFC822 actually provides a suggestion of including the group address in the Reply-To: field, but does not make any suggestion as to how or where that should be done.
RFC822: <quote> 4.4.3. REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TO
This field provides a general mechanism for indicating any
mailbox(es) to which responses are to be sent. Three typical
uses for this feature can be distinguished. In the first
case, the author(s) may not have regular machine-based mail-
boxes and therefore wish(es) to indicate an alternate machine
address. In the second case, an author may wish additional
persons to be made aware of, or responsible for, replies. A
somewhat different use may be of some help to "text message
teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic distribution
services: include the address of that service in the "Reply-
To" field of all messages submitted to the teleconference;
then participants can "reply" to conference submissions to
guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of their
own. Note: The "Return-Path" field is added by the mail transport
service, at the time of final deliver. It is intended
to identify a path back to the orginator of the mes-
sage. The "Reply-To" field is added by the message
originator and is intended to direct replies.
</quote>
RFC1123 does not address this question at all.
<quote>
(E) The translation algorithm used to convert mail from the
Internet protocols to another environment's protocol
SHOULD try to ensure that error messages from the foreign
mail environment are delivered to the return path from the
SMTP envelope, not to the sender listed in the "From:"
field of the RFC-822 message. DISCUSSION:
Internet mail lists usually place the address of the
mail list maintainer in the envelope but leave the
original message header intact (with the "From:"
field containing the original sender). This yields
the behavior the average recipient expects: a reply
to the header gets sent to the original sender, not
to a mail list maintainer; however, errors get sent
to the maintainer (who can fix the problem) and not
the sender (who probably cannot).
</quote>Or maybe I should say "misquote". The above (section E of chapter 5.3.7, RFC1123) is the most comman reference used by opponents of munging the Reply-To: on a mailing list. The very clear intent of the DISCUSSION paragraph is provision for MTA errors, not a Guide To Running Your Listserv.
I respectfully submit that now, some 15 years after that RFC was written, a reply to the original sender is not "the behavior the average recipient expects".
Chapter 5.3.6, which deals specifically with mailing lists, doesn't address the Reply-To: header at all.
Also please note that Mr. Rosenthal doe not quote or reference *any* source which directly supports his opinion.
From what I can tell, those who want to change the behaviour are justunable to use their mailer programs correctly, or don't know how to setup procmail to remove duplicate emails. (both of which take less time than responding to this thread)
Well, that's just condescending and rude. I *am* able to use my MUA to do pretty much anything I want it to do, my .procmailrc is some 46 lines and works just like I want it to, thank you very little, and whoa, look at that! Managing commercial Unix mailservers is part of my job description!
Now if you had accused me of being lazy and worthless, that'd be much closer to the mark. I'm not about to add a stanza to my .procmailrc just because Chip sez so, and the Reply-To-All idea is a constant pain in the butt.
I belong to four other Unix or Linux mailing lists, all populated and managed by Unix admins with many more years in the industry than me. None of them require Reply-To-All, cut&paste, or procmail BS. I hit the Reply key and the list headers DTRT.
I don't know if you guys have noticed, but this mailing list is all but defunct. You might consider the idea that making posting to it *less* of a pain in the ass could encourage participation.
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