I've been watching the procmail list, via the digest, for some time,
after having left being a regular contributor because of the decreasing
signal to noise ratio.
For some time now, I've seen a few correspondants submit messages to the
list with a request, typically near the signature, that replies not go
directly to the sender, because s/he is also on the list and doesn't
want to receive two copies of the message.
I find that these kinds of requests particularly ironic, since one of
the well-known utilities of procmail is the "formail -D" filter, which
can be used to remove duplicates.
Any good afficionado of procmail should have a duplicate removing filter
in their personal filter toolkit.
On top of this silly request, there lately seems to be a heated
discussion on whether or not setting the "Reply-To" on a list is a Good
or Bad thing. I claim that It Depends. That is, it depends upon the
purpose and scope of the list.
There are no hard and fast rules, and these are only my opinions:
For a openly subscribable, unmoderated list, of an arbitrarily large
(and unknown) readership, setting the "Reply-To:" or "Resent-Reply-To:"
to force replies to the list is probably not a good idea. It unduly
forces the attention of everyone on the list for no good reason.
IMHO, replies to general queries or FAQs should only include a
potentially large and unknown list membership if the reply contains
something new and instructive or important. If it is a standard answer
to a FAQ, then there is no need to address the entire list membership.
Thus, the decision to reply to the list or not should be made by the
person making the reply, not the list manager.
I've observed that some people favor replies to the list, even for
trivial answers, usually for the sake of appearances. That is, by
replying often to the list, rather than only directly to the neophyte
sender, the "helpful" person is also implicitly advertising how
"helpful" they are, like peacocks spreading their tailfeathers for all
to see.
For a moderated list, it doesn't matter much because all replies to the
list would have to go through the moderator anyway, so having a
moderated list automatically cause replies back to the list is only
increasing the workload of the moderator. I can think of some valid
reasons why a moderator may wish to have replies automatically come to
the list. For example, perhaps as a way to track "conversations", and
dampen potential flame wars. In any case, it usually won't affect the
list membership unless a moderator approves it -- in which case, the
moderators will take the heat for making too many submissions.
For a closed list, typically with a well-known audience, or if the list
is limited in scope (for example: to discuss campus network policies),
then one of the functions of the list is essentially to be used as a
recording device. A list can only be used to record conversations if
the discussions are kept on the list, and do not go "offline" or break
up into private communiques. A convenient and useful way to do this is
to set the "Resent-Reply-To:".
In summary, for those of you who wish there were an Easy Answer, there
isn't. There is no automatic rule you can call upon to create the
Perfectly Configured List. There is no way to automatically impose
order upon chaos. A human will always have to think about, analyze,
make a decision, and then accept responsibility for whether or not to
set the "Reply-To:" header for a given list.
I hope that this has been helpful.
___________________________________________________________
Alan Stebbens <aks(_at_)sgi(_dot_)com> http://reality.sgi.com/aks