On Tue October 12 2004 23:25, Laird Breyer wrote:
What are you talking about? I'm very confused by this statement.
I'm talking about a mailing list server which has an internal list of
subscriber addresses, and any message sent to the list address is
distributed to each of the subscribers. If some of the subscribers
have indicated special preferences for how they would like to receive
*their* copies of the messages sent by others to the list, then the
server can perform whatever action is preferred on *their* copies of
the messages, based on both the message content and the archive of
past messages if needed.
Standard operating procedure for list expanders.
The fact that such action can depend on
message content and past archive is what makes the server "smart".
No effect on the above.
The other members of the list don't need to know anything at all, except
whether they want to send a particular message to the list address. Once
it hits the list address, they have no more say in where it goes or what
happens to that copy, except for their own personal copy delivered to them
as list members.
Agreed. But your earlier "render inadequate the default behaviour of
sending list responses to the address that was subscribed" makes
little or no sense; responses to list messages are sent by some respondent
to wherever he wishes to send them, not "to the address that was
subscribed".
If all the MUAs in the world followed
all applicable standards consistently, we probably wouldn't be having this
conversation in the first place.
We're having the discussion primarily because some authors fail to
indicate where they wish responses to be sent, yet expect everybody
else to be able to read their minds regarding those preferences. That's
not an MUA issue, it's a human issue (and in fact many, if not most,
MUAs have all of the necessary functionality, and the protocols
certainly do).