ietf-822
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Re: Understanding response protocols

2004-10-18 07:56:32

Nathaniel Borenstein writes:
I'd go further and claim that the typical user lacks the interest/attention to deal effectively with more than 2 reply choices, which the user will naively think of as "the sender" and "everyone." Trying to get most users to handle a third choice -- e.g. "reply to all" vs. "followup" -- is asking at least as much of the user as expecting them to simply edit out the duplicates by hand.

Hear! Hear!

However, I question whether MFT might not cause as many problems as it solves. Consider:

       To: List(_at_)example(_dot_)com
       CC:  Bill(_at_)x(_dot_)com, Bob(_at_)y(_dot_)com, Jim(_at_)z(_dot_)com

This is something I have done in the past in order to bring into a list conversation a few people who are not on the mailing list. Now, what should the list processor at example.com do with this?

Nothing?

As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong) current implementations would redistribute the message like this:

       Mail-Followup-To: List(_at_)example(_dot_)com
       To: List(_at_)example(_dot_)com
       CC:  Bill(_at_)x(_dot_)com, Bob(_at_)y(_dot_)com, Jim(_at_)z(_dot_)com

This matches my understanding, and I have seen messages like this, but I had the impression that the MFT field was added by the sender's MUA or MTA?

Arnt