In <41471F70(_dot_)9090602(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> Bruce Lilly
<blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> writes:
D. J. Bernstein wrote:
Specifically: A huge number of today's messages have a suboptimal reply
address in From, the desired reply address in Reply-To,
As suggested by Keith, and as discussed in my earlier message, the
proposal under discussion is based on individual responses going
to the mailbox(es) specified in the From field, when the respondent
specifically wishes to direct a response to the original messages
author(s).
I think you need to make it clear that you are referring to some
"Reply-To-Author" functionality such as has been mentioned here and which
apparently is available in some agents.
Personally, I am somewhat dubious about such feature because
a) most users will suppose it is the normal way to reply to ordinary
mails, which it isn't ("Reply-To-From-address" would convey a more
accurate intention of such a button), and
b) I am very dubious about _any_ automatic method of responding to the
From address (RFC strongly suggests that it is not normal behaviour for
any sort of reply mechanism, and it seems an odd thing to do when the
normal use of Reply-To by authors, as commonly understood, is "please do
not reply to my From address, use this one instead"). For the occasional
user who has good reason to do otherwise, Cut-and-Paste is plenty good
enough.
Default responses would go to the addresses specified
in Reply-To, whether ... [lots of good reasons snipped].
By "Default response", I presume you mean what the usual "Reply" button
does (and maybe Reply-to-All also).
and the desired
followup addresses in To etc.
I think at this point it would be useful to establish the proper
distinction between To: and Cc: when sending to a mailing list (to be
documented as BCP somewhere).
IMO, when sending to a mailing list, the address of the list should
normally go in "To:". "Cc:" should be reserved for cases where the message
is intended for some individual but it is thought the mailing list might
be interested to hear about it.
But that is not what currently happens in many cases where a replier
presses "Reply-To-All". In that case, one usually gets the original author
in To: and the mailing list in Cc:, whereas in most situations common
sense would have put them the other way around. The real problem here is
that "Reply-To-All" is the wrong button to use when replying to the list
but, unfortunately, the "Reply" button will usually do the wrong thing.
Hence the reason why we are having this debate, and hence the reason why
any solution to this problem is going to involve extra MUA functionality,
such as a "Reply-to-List" button, or an extra header such as MFT, or
both.
Wrong. Default responses go to wherever the original message
sender set Reply-To to point --
Which is no solution at all, as various people have pointed out. Anything
that involves routine manual addition of an extra header everytime someone
posts to a mailing list is doomed to failure, because you will never
educate users to do it. We MUST have a solution where the right thing happens
automatically (possibly after some configuration by the user). MFT might
do it. Mail-Copies-To might do it. But Reply-To already has too much
baggage attached to it, and the only configuration option for it likely to
be available in current MUAs is to set it to some fixed address for _all_
outgoing mails.
Moving it means
changing and redeploying a huge number of programs, including homegrown
mail scripts that haven't been touched for years.
Whereas none of any of the other proposals to date would require
any changes whatsoever, right? :-)
It is quite clear to me that _any_solution to the problems we are
dicussing will require changes to MUAs before it becomes effective. MFT is
a nice solution on the face of it, but requires the most change to
existing MUAs. Mail-Copies-To would he easier to introduce, but it does
not do such a good job. Looks like we have to choose some least-harmful
alternative. Reply-To is what we have at the moment, and it is clearly not
working.
For comparison: Mail-Followup-To avoids all the costs of that first
transition step.
Nonsense. First it has to be properly defined.
It is well enough defined for us to understand what it would entail. If we
decide it is the way we might want to go, then someone can write a draft
with a view to a Proposed Standard, and then we can discuss it, and maybe
tweak it to do better.
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl(_at_)clerew(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave,
CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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