The vast majority of MUA software on the planet has only Reply and
Reply All. Those users are using Reply All, so as to keep it a group
discussion.
"Reply All" has a standard, decades old behavior, and mailing list
robots are designed around the assumption that it is used.
Email, and certainly email standards, which spawned email traditions,
such as Reply All, are older than mailing lists, and mailing list
standards such as List-Post, which is slowly spawning new traditions
such as Reply List.
The assumption that "we are in the same list" only holds when all the
recipients of the message are subscribers of the list (because it
rejects posts from nonsubscribers). Such a policy is made necessary
by spammers. Traditionally, a subscriber of a mailing list is not one
who wishes to post to it, but one who wishes to be in the loop on all
new postings.
Hear, hear!
There currently isn't any fully reliable way for the MUA to know who
is a subscriber and who isn't; only the list robot knows.
Reply All does the right thing in all circumstances. Mailing list
robots know that it's being used and process things intelligently.
Are you referring to the claim that mailing list managers filter out
recipients who have been given a direct copy? Can you refer me to an MLM
that actually does this, with some definite proof that it does? Because
I've heard rumours that they do this, but I have never actually seen one
do it yet, that I've noticed. This kind of filtering is fraught with
problems, that we discussed earlier in the thread, and because of them,
I believe, many MLMs simply don't do this 'intelligent' filtering that
people claim they do.
The new-fangled Reply List is nonstandard, and makes assumptions about
how lists are configured.
I don't think it makes any assumptions about how lists are configured.
If a list includes the standard List-Post header, it exposes it, through
a "reply" button, that's all. I only wish MUAs would expose more of the
standard List-* headers, such as List-Unsubscribe, and MLMs wouldn't
need so many keyword filters and list admins time, to deal with people
sending messages saying "unsubscribe" to the list.
As Ben Schmidt has noted, it is useful in specific circumstances, not
as a "go to" button for replying to any posting on any kind of mailing
list.
Although it's true that its use is limited, as Reply and Reply All
certainly still have their uses, actually, I think Reply List is the "go
to" button for mailing lists, as it works regardless of whether a list
has its Reply-To header set or not. Certainly in Thunderbird, it is
quickly becoming my "go to" button, as I can't remember which of the
lists I subscribe to have Reply-To set, and which don't. Pushing Reply
List always does what I want. If I want to include the individual I'm
replying to, because a reply is particularly relevant to them, I hit
Reply All--and then adjust the headers if it was a Reply-To list,
because it won't work then. If I want to send a private reply, I hit
Reply--and then adjust the headers if it was a Reply-To list, because it
won't work then.
Not always, this account for instance sorts by list, anything not
associate with a list-id or x-been-there, gets sent to an x-blah
folder right at the end, so my inbox stays pretty empty, and your
direct messages may not get read for weeks, as I liken it to a second
spam folder :)
That's fine. If you don't want direct replies, you don't have to have
them. And I think you've done exactly the right thing by filing them in
a folder you rarely read. You're doing what you want using your
software, rather than expecting MLMs, MUAs and others to do your job for
you.
There are two good ways to sort list-related discussions into folders.
If the list postings have some subject line tag like [RCU], you can
use that.
It is hard to know what is going to happen with this, since such a hack
breaks DomainKeys/DKIM, which is being deployed more and more widely,
and honoured more and more often, particularly by big mail providers.
It's possibly MUAs will start marking messages as list posts using the
List-Id header or something, and then subject line hacks gradually
disappear.
A way which does not rely on this subject line hack is this: have your
rule look for the address of the list in the Cc: or To: In other
words, whenever a given list is one of the recipients of a message,
that message can be deemed as being related to that list and shunted
to the appropriate folder.
This works great for both list replies and direct replies.
Yes, if you use list-specific headers to do your sorting, something
will happen that you might not necessarily like: direct replies go to
your inbox, and only list copies to the list folder.
But, this may also be why someone like Ben Schmidt (for whom I
obviously cannot speak) may want those two copies. He might want the
robot-generated list copies to go to the list folder for reference,
where all the threads are intact in their entirety, and those messages
in which he is personally mentioned to go to his Inbox, where they get
his attention immediately.
He can delete the Inbox copies after reading them and replying to some
of them, yet have the discussion intact in the appropriate folder.
You characterised my workflow well, Kaz.
And again, I think this is exactly the right thing to do. Set up your
filtering based on whether or not you like to see direct replies in your
inbox or not.
None of these is perfect. If you don't like seeing direct replies in
your inbox, you can end up with duplicates in your list folder this way,
which you may or may not have the facility to filter. On the other hand,
you may have an MUA that automatically filters duplicates, e.g. by
Message-Id (such as Gmail) and you can't get your inbox copy even if you
want it.
Ben.
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