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Re: Understanding response protocols

2004-10-18 15:41:59

The issue is how the MUA is not designed to expect an "email message" to be
viewed as a "group conferencing" concept.

or maybe, the issue is that email freely mixes groups and individuals, without distinguishing between the two, but there are some people who want "groups" to work differently.

(question: other than not generating duplicates - which can be solved by other means - what are other ways that group addresses should work differently than individual addresses? )

The natural Reply for an email is to go back to the one person who wrote it.

not clear. in paper correspondence a reply is often sent to other recipients and cc's of the original message. basically, it is sent to people who should get the reply.

However, in a list distribution, the "list address" is the new responsible
"person" or "entity" for where a natural reply should go to.

also not clear, especially when some recipients of the original message are lists and some are not, some of the recipients of the original message are not included in any of the lists and others are, some recipients of the original message deal with their list mail differently than their personal mail, and there's no way for the replier to know which of these is true for which recipients.

So the question is, if the MUA is currently designed to see the EMAIL style response logic to include the user of Reply-To:/From: for the natural reply address, should the backend list manager do more in this area to assist in
the process?

I say yes, and this works 100% in this area.

you are using dubious premises, so it's hardly surprising if your conclusion is wrong.

most of us have used lists that munged reply-to. most of us have seen the problems associated with doing so. if you haven't seen those problems yet, fine, feel free to read various missives on the subject that are on the net. but don't expect us to ignore what our experiences have taught us.

Keith


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