Laird Breyer wrote:
For somebody not on the list? Obviously he shouldn't receive list
messages unrelated to any that he might have submitted. If he wants
copies of any extended discussion (such as the example below) he'll
have to indicate so and rely on list members to cooperate with that
request.
That is a problem which an intelligent server as proposed can address
automatically.
I fail to see how that will work (i.e. automatically) for list
non-members.
basic function of a mailing list is to facilitate human group
communication by distributing messages to that group. The humans
involved need to indicate (to the other humans) their individual
preferences for responses [do they want responses to go only to
the list, do they want personal responses only, do they want both,
etc.].
But the list server can act as a proxy for these mundane tasks. If
the human can indicate his response preferences inside the message he
is sending, then surely the human can tell the server those response
preferences once, and the server can then insert these inside all the
messages being transmitted to the list.
You seem to be assuming that each author will want to indicate
the same response addresses for each message, which is not
necessarily the case.
* lacking strong authentication in the core mail protocol, it
is not possible for mailing list software (or humans for that
matter) to accurately determine the identity of a message
author or sender [without depending on the sender to include
some optional authentication information such as a digital
signature]. Inability to identify the author/sender means
an inability to perform some feat of magic based on author/
sender identity.
The identity/authentication of the author is not of concern (more
precisely, all these problems exist now in exactly this same form -
you expect other humans on the mailing list to accurately determine
the identity of some message's author, and send him a courtesy copy
etc. - does that make authors magicians?)
The point is that expecting mailing list software to do more
than expand distribution has authentication implications
above and beyond the issue of how recipients deal with (lack
of) authentication. A recipient who wishes to prepare some
sort of response needs to decide whether to respond in
accordance with any (possibly message-specific) recommendation
made by the original message author and act accordingly,
and that would not change with the hypothetical "intelligent"
remailer as I understand your description to date.