3 Feb
2000
3 Feb
'00
2:55 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Rich Lafferty once stated:
A mailing list subscriber wants to receive mail at an address different
from that in his From: header. (Let's say he's using Pine without
ALLOW_CHANGING_FROM, or he's using some older MUA that doesn't even
have the concept of changing the From: header). So, he sets the
Reply-To: to the address at which he actually accepts mail; the From:
isn't meaningful anymore.
Then it goes to the list, which replaces that Reply-To: with one
pointing at the list.
Explain how someone wishing to reply to him can retrieve the correct
address at this point. (Or, phrased differently, why the mailing list
should change anything at *all* in the message being sent.)
Because in this case, it's the Right Thing (TM). Honestly, just how often
is your case even relevant? I subscribe from an account I can't read mail
from so I want replies sent somewhere else? From (and
sorry about the URL)
http://www.unicom.com/BBS/bbs_forum.cgi?forum=replyto&read=000038-00000…
1: The person must be sending from an account that s/eh cannot
recieve mail from.
While this may have been true in the past, in most cases people are
reading/sending mail from the account they want the mail go to. In
the 7 years I've been using email and the 2 years of working at an
ISP I have only seen the reply-to used twice. Both times it was
because a person was switching to a new account and wanted an
effective way to get people in the habit of sending to the new
address. In such cases the mailing lists are usually the first to
move to the new address. Aside from a 1-2 day overlap, there really
is no danger of missing any mail.
And then there's
http://www.unicom.com/BBS/bbs_forum.cgi?forum=replyto&read=000058-00000…
I found your site because someone posted the URL on the video4linux
list, I by myself run a large site with 70 mailing-lists with over
15'000 subscribers. To be blunt, I think your page is useless with
the exception to give you feedback from the "real" world. I wrote my
list-software using procmail and perl-scripts to handle bounces,
archiving and email-header settings, I provide the functionality,
and list-operators who run the lists can decide whether they want
reply-to set to the list or the sender ... by default it's back to
the sender ... and 95% of all lists the *users* request me to set
reply-to the list, because sender are flooded with replies which are
meant for the list, and they end up forwarding them all. As
comparison, we have 3'000 incomings email per day, and running them
for four years I had to remove 4 emails from the archives because
people accidently assumed the reply would go to the sender and not
list itself.
But not content with that, I decided to ACTUALLY READ RFC-822 and see what
it says about this whole mess:
4.4.3. REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TO
This field provides a general mechanism for indicating any
mailbox(es) to which responses are to be sent. Three typical
uses for this feature can be distinguished. In the first
case, the author(s) may not have regular machine-based mail-
boxes and therefore wish(es) to indicate an alternate machine
address. In the second case, an author may wish additional
persons to be made aware of, or responsible for, replies. A
>> somewhat different use may be of some
help to "text message
>> teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic distribution
>> services: include the address of that service in the "Reply-
>> To" field of all messages submitted to the teleconference;
>> then participants can "reply" to conference submissions to
>> guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of their
>> own.
(emphasis mine). And that, I think ends this discussion.
It's awfully curious that a list full o' geeks
can't figure out how to
reply to a message in their mail client.
-spc (I can't figure out why anyone hasn't read the RFC until now ... 8-)