Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote:
This is not your fault. As you may recall, we had
this discussion about
half a year ago, and it boils down to people not configuring their e-mail
clients properly to obey the reply-to directive in the e-mail headers of
the list messages.
No, that is not the problem. Since I read my mail with full headers using
a very "raw" MUA that does *nothing* behind my back, I see what actually
happens is this: most list messages arrive with Reply-To: set to the list,
but some arrive with Reply-To: listing both the list and the author.
Since the Reply-To: header is tweaked by the mailing list software, I can't
see how it can behave so inconsistently. Since I am a hard determinist
when it comes to computers, the only rational explanation I have is that
there must be some differences in the headers of messages before they reach
the list that causes the list software to process them differently. But
of course in order to pin the problem down, one must see the messages in
their original form prior to alteration by the list software, which I cannot
do as a mere subscriber, only Jay or other list staff can do that.
MS
P.S. One thought: when I was designing my own mailing list management software,
I implemented a feature by which a list can accept posts from non-subscribers
with moderator approval. I implemented it so that it set Reply-To: header
to both the list and the author on those approved outsider posts, on the
reasoning that the author should see replies but won't see them on the
list because he is not subscribed. I don't know anything about the software
Jay uses for this list, but there is a chance that its authors followed
reasoning similar to mine and the posts arriving with Reply-To: set to the
list and the author come from non-subscribers approved by moderators.