Bruce Lilly <blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> writes:
Simon Josefsson wrote:
Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> writes:
not if the list were on the To or CC line and the recipient did a "reply
to all". (I'm assuming that reply-to: nobody:; would just remove the
From addresses from the reply recipient list, and have no effect on the
addresses obtained from the To and CC fields of the subject message).
The problem is when people want to reply to the author, and press the
"reply author" button. That operation would take the content of From:
as the recipient, but Reply-To would override that value with
nobody:;, and the reply would go to the bit bucket.
Presumably if the author has set Reply-To to an ineffective address,
he explicitly doesn't want personal responses.
Exactly.
Setting Reply-To: nobody:; was proposed as a solution to the problem
avoiding direct _copies_ of discussions on mailing lists. Reply-To:
achieve this.
But, as you say, it also achieve another thing, that the user won't
get personal response at all. This is not what people using MFT
wants, hence Reply-To: nobody:; is not a good replacement.
My impression of the people using MFT, and I'm on several mailing
lists where it is used heavily, is that they _want_ personal replies
to go to themselves, but they don't want copies of the mailing list
discussion sent to them personally.
Somebody who really wants to override the authors' wishes can of
course still send a message manually. Of course it takes a small
amount of effort, but that is again presumably in accordance with
the authors' wishes in setting up the message to discourage direct
responses. So what's the problem?
The small amount of manual work is required to be done manually,
that's the problem. The buttons "reply all" and "reply author" work
in many MUAs today. A solution that break "reply author", and require
users to manually change the address manually, is a non-starter IMHO.
Thanks,
Simon