On Wed, 25 May 2005, Paul Jakma wrote:
I'm sceptical the Reply-To approach would work - I think i'll try an
experiment and see how it works in practice.
Early results suggest Reply-To is not a good idea: Gnus and
Thunderbird use Reply-To always (Reply and Reply-all).
The classic "Reply-To considered harmful" argument on list mail
applies to this usage of Reply-To surely?
(Pine is slightly better, it tends to ask whether the Reply-To should
be followed).
There's also the problem that the Reply-To isn't transitive. Any
reply will (likely) be:
From: respondent
To: sender, list
Anyone who replies to /this/ mail on the list likely will reply to
just respondent and list - indeed, it could just be to the list
(there's seems to be list netiquette developing of stripping out all
addresses bar the list. Or MUAs like Mutt use the List-* headers to
only include list if the "list reply" functionality is used, and also
copying Mail-Followup-To listed mailboxes - hence why I list that
problematic header in my mail).
I wonder, if one considers:
- Reply-To is one shot, not transitive through a thread
- Reply-To makes it difficult for people to /not/ reply to the
Reply-To. (I know the position on this, MUAs should be
fixed, but..)
- MUAs exist (Mutt, Apple Mail) which offer a "list reply" function,
some of which use ad-hoc and incompatible ways to allow originators
to specify their preference for replies to list mail
That it might be time to consider a list-reply-preference type
header? The "no choice / always Reply-To without question" behaviour
of many MUAs aspect particularly worries me and makes me wary of
using it to indicate list-reply preference.. (i've seen what
happens).
regards,
--
Paul Jakma paul(_at_)clubi(_dot_)ie paul(_at_)jakma(_dot_)org
Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
There are no emotional victims, only volunteers.