-I"Reply-To: listname(_at_)domain" \
This is generally a rather bad idea as it *forces* all replies to go
to the list rather than leaving that decision to the end user (a
"Reply" verses "Follow-up"). It can also cause problems with
auto-responders, bounced messages, and other such things as they will
use the Reply-To: address and send mail to the entire list.
If you can't use a real mailing list package like SmartList, at least
borrow ideas from it.
I realize not all lists follow this reply-to convention. However, for the
purposes of the small 20-30 (invite-only) crowd associated with the list,
the main purpose of the list is to keep discussion in the group. Reply,
and everybody gets it type of thing. If they want to reply to the actual
author as an individual, it is there in the headers (FROM), and they can
manually direct the reply - since a private reply is less frequently
needed, the simplicity of just doing a reply and not needing to do anything
else is favoured.
Follow-up is also ill-supported on the major PC mail clients. For
instance, to your message on procmail, I can reply (to just you), or
reply-all (to you, and ME, but still not the list), forward or redirect --
but if I want to reply to the list, I have to choose it from my
addressbook. This functionality doesn't facilitate what I wanted in the
script.
X-Loop is implemented, so autoresponders _shouldn't_ be a problem (also not
used in the crowd).
Bounced messages appear to actually come to me, at the Resent-Sender
address, which is intentionally different. In fact, bounces are handled in
advance of the script entirely.
I appreciate your input about the potential pitfalls of this approach,
however, this script has been working fine for over two years to maintain
several discussion groups without incident -- except that one particular
mailer client seems to take issue with the order of the appearance of the
Resent- headers (but still replies correctly, it just doesn't show proper
information about the real author).