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Re: [Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-moore-mail-nr-fields-00.txt]

2004-09-03 22:59:44

Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> writes:

Exactly.  The frequently requested behavior from practically everyone
on the USEFOR list is for people to send mail only to the list when
responding in public, and yet Bruce insists on sending a private copy
and then tells people to set Reply-To or filter out duplicate mail.

I'm not sure that the USEFOR list counts as "broad support from the
technical community".

Heh.  Touche'.

but the point that different groups have different expectations is
certainly one that we should keep in mind.

Right, that was my real point, rather than chastizing Bruce (although
interpreting djb's bounce as something related to MFT was a rather
unsupportable leap).  This is a huge issue with mailing lists, to the
degree that every list I've ever been on has, at one point or another, had
the Reply-To fight, and there is no configuration that makes everyone
happy, or even not unhappy.

We all know the problems with setting Reply-To, particularly trampling the
user's own Reply-To, but also making it quite hard to reply to the
individual in many mail clients and resulting in other mail clients
routinely ignoring Reply-To (*ahem* Pine *ahem*) on personal replies.
(The last is so bad that when answering role address mail these days, I
don't even bother with Reply-To any more; I just change my From header to
be the role address.  This isn't as "honest," but without this, I
constantly get personal replies to mail that should go back to the role
address.)  The flipside is that in some lists I routinely get responses
that belong on the list in personal e-mail because people just assume that
Reply-To is set on all mailing lists.  Both of these are broken, and this
isn't going to get fixed by changing people.

I only know a few mailing lists where personal copies are actively
encouraged as part of the culture, and in one of those they're still
supposed to be selective (including only the people who have action items
in the mail being sent).  There are a lot of lists where people tolerate
it, and a majority of lists (again in my personal experience) where
personal copies are disliked, either mildly or strongly.  Right now, there
is no way of representing that information usefully either in the list
configuration or by individual subscribers other than the huge Reply-To
hammer.

There are more pieces missing than just a header like MFT, I think.  At
the least, I think we need some way of representing the following:

 * Is the user a member of the mailing list to which they sent the mail?
   MFT lets the user express this indirectly by answering the related but
   not identical question "do you want copies of responses on the list,"
   but that actual question is useful in other situations (it comes up for
   me *all the time* in internal work mailing lists where most people are
   not using MFT-aware clients and I can't remember which people are on
   which team list, and it's caused miscommunication problems at least
   once in the recent past).

   The mailing list manager can answer this question itself in some
   circumstances (skipping the problem of people subscribed under
   different addresses than they send mail, which is uncommon in the
   situations where I see this the most, but which is a tricky problem
   when it happens).  However, it doesn't really have anywhere to *put*
   that information for the use of MUAs.

 * Should replies to list postings *generally* go only to the list or to
   the list and the user, as a matter of list culture?  One of the
   problems with MFT is that each individual has to use it, and many
   individuals just don't or can't easily because they don't have the
   right MUA.  Another problem is that this really does vary by list
   culture and it makes a lot of sense in some situations to set a
   default.  It would be nice to have a List-* header that could express
   this default and use that in the absence of a user-specific preference.

 * Does the individual user want copies of list postings?  This is what
   MFT expresses clearly when used fully, and it deals with such issues as
   "crossposts" between multiple mailing lists.  This should probably
   override the list default in nearly all cases, if expressed.

I'd love to see something that solves this problem, since it causes a lot
of overhead, misunderstandings, and ruffled feathers right now.  I don't
think the To-No-Reply proposal really does anything to help with it,
although it may well solve a *different* problem.  MFT goes part of the
way, but I'm personally dubious that MFT will ever get much more traction
than it has right now because of the amount of client-side configuration
it requires, and it doesn't quite get the first two things above.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)             
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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