On Mon, 30 May 2005, Charles Lindsey wrote:
In <200505271041(_dot_)43706(_dot_)blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> Bruce Lilly
<blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> writes:
As another, not uncommon, example, consider a message posted to a
mailing list with a request by the author to send off-list (only)
responses, to be summarized by the author. The author could
easily indicate that with Reply-To, and every response that is
directed "where the author suggested" will comply with that. For
such a mailing list message, your "list context" would send a
doubly wrong response -- it wouldn't go directly to the author (as
requested) and would go to the entire list (contrary to the
request).
Note btw that "list context" isn't my idea, it's simply what a few
MUAs in the field already /do/. (Indeed, at least one simply ignores
all cues in the mail being replied to for a "list reply", other than
MFT).
The problem isn't so much in 'my' "list context", but in the
problematic /deployed/ MUA functionality.
That is exactly the sort of situation that MFT is supposed to deal
with. In the absence of MFT, then using the List-Post address is
the right thing when "Replying-to-List". But if MFT is present, it
should override the List-Post. There might even be a 'list' keyword
in the MFT header to mean reply to List-Post (to be used in
addition to the sender's address if he want replies both to the
list and himself).
I'm not sure about MFT, it seems as vague and broad (and hence as
problematic) as Reply-To is.
It seems to me that supplying information which is as specific and
indisputably true as possible is better than supplying vague
"suggestions", which may be too broad in their scope to be able to
provide . Eg:
"Suggest that Replies go To <a>, <b>, etc.."
and
"Suggest that Follow-ups go To ...."
seem fraught with possibilities of ambigious corner cases to me.
Compared to things like:
"This mail was sent by <b>"
or
"Please consider copying <a>, <b>, ... on replies"
Seem far clearer and with far limited scope for misinterpretation.
(whether the information/suggestion is acted on is a different matter
and in the hands of the respondent). It's nice to have a limited set
of general cues if it all works out nicely, but not if it fails to
deal with common usage scenarios. :)
For the MFT case, what constitutes a "Followup" exactly? And didn't
Keith Moore highlight a few problems in the previous thread? (around
list exploders, i cant remember - i'll have to go reread again).
regards,
--
Paul Jakma paul(_at_)clubi(_dot_)ie paul(_at_)jakma(_dot_)org
Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
You know, the difference between this company and the Titanic is that the
Titanic had paying customers.