On Oct 08 2004, Bruce Lilly wrote:
True, but how often does an author change his response addresses
when posting messages to the same list over and over? Your return
path blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com hasn't changed on this list for months...
An author might very well change his recommendation for responses
on a per-message basis. Most of my messages to this list recommend
I do accept that the possibility is there, but am yet to be convinced that
it happens so frequently to render inadequate the default behaviour of
sending list responses to the address that was subscribed.
it is certainly conceivable that an author
might specify responses sent directly to him (i.e. the author), with
the intention of subsequently posting a summary of those responses
to the list.
Is it not true that in this scenario, the author still depends on the
cooperation of any respondents to honour his specification, rather
than reply to the list regardless? For example, I use Mutt, and have a
key for list replies and a key for ordinary replies. When I press the former,
my reply always goes to the list, I believe.
If such cooperation is required now for your example, then the same
would be true with an "intelligent" list. Namely: if I want
respondents to not reply through the list, I must communicate the
requirement to their MUA and I still depend on them to follow my
wishes. Or am I missing something?
Or he might copy one list on a message of potential interest to that
list based on the topic of a discussion taking place on a different
list, with responses directed to the list on which the discussion is
taking place.
Why would the members of the copied list follow this recommendation
and respond on the primary discussion list? I understand that is
probably desirable, but what mechanism will actually enforce this
behaviour now? Is it Cc: ?
Also, this may be my inexperience with mailing list issues talking, but
I don't see anything wrong with each list treating non-member addresses
uniformly according to its nonmember rules (chosen by each list administrator).
Whether such an address refers to a person or another mailing list should
not matter.
But I think this discussion is becoming very technical, and I'm getting lost.
Can you perhaps recommend some review document which describes mailing list
problems and various historical solutions, if there is one?
E.g. if my MUA sets Reply-To: and expects responses to that address,
but the responder's MUA ignores Reply-To: for some reason, and only
uses From: say, then the responder may not reply correctly.
"Correctly" doesn't enter into the discussion. The issue is whether
or not an author's recommendation for responses can be expressed,
and that is precisely the semantics of the Reply-To field. If a
respondent chooses to send a response elsewhere, that is his
prerogative.
This makes no sense to me. On the one hand, you seem to oppose mail
propagation decisions by mailing lists because they may differ from
what the author wants, but on the other you fully accept the
prerogative of respondents to do as they please.
If the prospective respondent makes a configuration choice directly
with the mailing list, and empowers it to alter the propagation of
received messages destined for himself, surely that's his prerogative?
In other words, for mailing list traffic passing through the list
server, I'm saying that the rights of an author stop when the list
server receives the message, and the rights of a respondent begin when
the list server is about to distribute this message. I'm not saying anything
for off-list traffic.
--
Laird Breyer.