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Re: Choosing recipient of automatic replies

2002-06-03 06:55:08

The fact that mailing lists are a difficult problem is a matter of bad
choices throughout the history of e-mail.  In the beginning, one couldn't
guess, but once it became clear, we should have put mailing-list-specific
fields in to solve the problem.  We didn't.  A pity.

But let's look at how this stuff might be used (and *is* used, in some
non-standard systems, at least) in a business environment.  Here's a
common situation: an admin assistant sends a note on behalf of a principal,
submitting the message from a shared group ID.  The message asks for some
response to be sent to the principal's tech assistant.  Something like this:

Return-Path: <Group-ID(_at_)company(_dot_)com>
Sender: <Joe-Admin-Asst(_at_)company(_dot_)com>
From: <Susan-Manager(_at_)company(_dot_)com>
Reply-To: <Nancy-Tech-Asst(_at_)company(_dot_)com>
To: ...
Subject: Information needed

All,
I urgently need any information you have about the Banana project.  Please
collect that you have and send it to Nancy ASAP.  Thanks.

Susan Goombah
Manager, Fruit Projects
company.com, Inc.

Now, the decision about where to send various types of replies can be a
complicated one, and very much depends upon the semantics.  Very rarely
sure *any* reply to this go to Susan.  It's her signature on the message,
but everything here is delegated.

Most human-generated replies should go to Nancy, the Reply-To address.
Most mail-transport replies should go to Group-ID, the Return-Path
address.  Some things might go to Joe, the Sender address (perhaps
something like "Why did you send this to Bill; he's been re-assigned
for weeks now?  Please correct your mailing list."), but those could
arguably go to the Group-ID also (which is resumably used so that if
Joe is out one day, the temp who's substituting can deal with things
in his stead).

The problem is that all of this isn't clear, and that some of it
depends upon a human thinking about what the reply is and to whom it
should really be sent.  And many/most humans can't be bothered, with
the result that replies often wind up going to *everyone* the MUA will
allow them to be sent to.

Barry 
--
Barry Leiba, Internet Messaging Technology   
(leiba(_at_)watson(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com)
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/l/leiba



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