ietf-822
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Re: *Reply-to* considered harmful (was Re: Understanding response protocols)

2005-06-07 07:27:32

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Keith Moore wrote:

Rather, the whole assumption that the author of a message should be able to change the behavior of a recipient's user agent is very much in doubt.

Amen (I have come to realise).

The only way to make Reply work better is to improve the user interfaces of mail user agents so that recipients of messages are more easily able to explicitly choose where their replies go. To the next new fields can help this process, they can only do so by providing more information to a recipient to inform that choice.

How about looking at this as two seperate problems:

1. Unhelpful behaviour of many MUAs in presence of Reply-To

2. Desires by sending users for finer-grained means to specify
   preferences for replies

Would it be an idea to start by solving 1 first? Eg via a BCP or some other document?

That would help clear-up the scope of 2 also. (Eg, currently the desire for 2 is often because of 1 - that's why I initially approached this list).

Keith

regards,
--
Paul Jakma      paul(_at_)clubi(_dot_)ie        paul(_at_)jakma(_dot_)org       
Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that works.