The best text on the subject i've seen is ``Reply-To'' Munging Considered
Harmful by Chip Rosenthal.
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
And the rebuttle:
http://www.metasystema.org/reply-to-useful.mhtml
I personally like Reply-To: set to the mailing list. All the lists I'm on
are set up that way and there have been no problems that I could see (yes,
you see the occasional private message sent but it's not that big a
problem).
Hello again everyone! Good to be back!
I have read both the above web articles. I'd like to cast my vote in favour of
REPLY-TO: == THE LIST
Why?
1. I don't want to receive two messages when someone replies to me and the list
2. With the old system, if someone forgot to change the header, there was a
spurious message, which I deleted. Some people might object to the waste of
bandwidth, but it merely gave me one extra message to delete.
With the new system, if someone forgets to change the header, the information
doesn't reach the list. This causes a bigger waste of bandwidth, because you
get more people answering the same question, not having seen each other's
replies. And it stifles discussion, because replies-to-replies often never get
generated (and these are sometimes the most useful).
So the new method gives less info to the list for more use of bandwidth. IMHO,
not good.
I am on several lists, of which about half work the old way (reply to the list
by default). This is very convenient on all of them. Of the others, on the one
where I have asked questions I have received substantially the same reply
privately from several people, but the discussion hasn't borne fruit on the
list.
Just my two penn'orth...
Philip.
PS I almost forgot to edit the addressees of this one...
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