ietf-822
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: non-member messages to lists (was Re: reply etiquette)

2004-10-12 20:35:20

On Oct 12 2004, Bruce Lilly wrote:

I responded that's a possibility, but by far in most cases an author
wants responses sent to him via the mailing list, not directly, so that
ought to be default behaviour for this kind of advanced mailing list 
server. 

That makes little sense; a person subscribes to a mailing list
specifying his email address as "the address that was subscribed".
If he posts a message to that list and some reader responds "to
the address that was subscribed" (however he is supposed to be able

(snipped).

What are you talking about? I'm very confused by this statement.

I'm talking about a mailing list server which has an internal list of
subscriber addresses, and any message sent to the list address is
distributed to each of the subscribers. If some of the subscribers
have indicated special preferences for how they would like to receive
*their* copies of the messages sent by others to the list, then the
server can perform whatever action is preferred on *their* copies of
the messages, based on both the message content and the archive of
past messages if needed. The fact that such action can depend on 
message content and past archive is what makes the server "smart".

The other members of the list don't need to know anything at all, except
whether they want to send a particular message to the list address. Once
it hits the list address, they have no more say in where it goes or what
happens to that copy, except for their own personal copy delivered to them
as list members. 


I was thinking of Mutt's list-reply command. From the manual:
[...]

That involves configuration, and any "list" involved is either some
preconfigured static mailbox or is derived (with some additional
configuration) from the content of some non-standard field set by
somebody else (or by his UA following some extensive configuration
on his end).  There is no guarantee that that mailbox is a list at
all; a preconfigured mailbox won't be able to handle a message sent
to multiple lists, author recommendations, etc.

That's the current situation with MUAs. People configure them according
to their whims and computer skills. If all the MUAs in the world followed
all applicable standards consistently, we probably wouldn't be having this
conversation in the first place.


Sounds like what you're looking for is an ESP-based server...

As long as nobody thinks of the Giant Marshmallow Man, we'll be safe...

-- 
Laird Breyer.


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>