5 Nov
2014
5 Nov
'14
12:19 p.m.
Oh hell. I sure didn't mean to open up that can of worms (the every year or
so debate on if replies should be to the list or to the poster). But since
it HAS been brought up....
Background for short-timers: There is a recurring debate every year or so as
to the reply-to headers setting on the list. The way it works now, when the
list sends out list traffic/posts to each of you, it "munges" the reply-to
header so that when you hit "reply" to a list post, the reply goes to the
list. If you want to just reply to the poster directly (off-list), you have
to go through gyrations like hitting forward and typing in the senders email
address.
Taking off my list owner hat... the following is my own personal opinion on
the topic which shall not be dictated upon the rest:
I think that's insane, not to mention that I suspect it violates some RFC's
and breaks the good intentions/functionality of most MUA's. But
regardless.... if the list was set the other (the normal) way... when you
get a post you hit reply to reply directly (and only) to the original poster
and if you want it to go to the entire list - you hit "reply all". I mean,
come on - that's why mail clients HAVE a reply vs. "reply all" button.
The only argument I've heard that is vaguely cogent for the current method,
is that people will often hit reply with a golden nugget of information and
the rest of the list will miss out on that. The argument on the other side
of the fence is that having it set the way it currently is causes people to
very often post things to the list that were meant to be private.
I am of the opinion that the reply-to should be set to the poster, not the
list, and let people use their MUA the way it was intended. That being said,
I'll defer to whatever the majority of folks wish. On the other hand, this
list is mainly frequented by Grumpy Old Men aka Curmudgeons - of which I am
most certainly one - and changing this well-entrenched behavior is likely to
start a religious war which I want no part of :)
<troll>So how bout that 10-year rule?</troll>
;)
J
4:09 p.m.
On Wed, 5 Nov 2014, Jay West wrote:
Background for short-timers: There is a recurring
debate every year or so as
to the reply-to headers setting on the list. The way it works now, when the
list sends out list traffic/posts to each of you, it "munges" the reply-to
header so that when you hit "reply" to a list post, the reply goes to the
list. If you want to just reply to the poster directly (off-list), you have
to go through gyrations like hitting forward and typing in the senders email
address.
Taking off my list owner hat... the following is my own personal opinion on
the topic which shall not be dictated upon the rest:
I think that's insane, not to mention that I suspect it violates some RFC's
and breaks the good intentions/functionality of most MUA's. But
regardless.... if the list was set the other (the normal) way... when you
get a post you hit reply to reply directly (and only) to the original poster
and if you want it to go to the entire list - you hit "reply all". I mean,
come on - that's why mail clients HAVE a reply vs. "reply all" button.
The only argument I've heard that is vaguely cogent for the current method,
is that people will often hit reply with a golden nugget of information and
the rest of the list will miss out on that. The argument on the other side
of the fence is that having it set the way it currently is causes people to
very often post things to the list that were meant to be private.
I am of the opinion that the reply-to should be set to the poster, not the
list, and let people use their MUA the way it was intended. That being said,
I'll defer to whatever the majority of folks wish. On the other hand, this
list is mainly frequented by Grumpy Old Men aka Curmudgeons - of which I am
most certainly one - and changing this well-entrenched behavior is likely to
start a religious war which I want no part of :)
Jay,
Keep in mind that for many of us with text-based clients using hotkeys,
changing anything that changes the behavior of the email client's reply
prompts is going to cause headaches with replies being sent to the wrong
reply address.
Any idea when the last time the reply/reply-to/etc reply-type headers were
changed? I noticed recently after not posting in quite a long time that
I'm sometimes missending replies to the original poster instead of the
list. I'm using the same email client and the hotkeys for replying are
pretty much done from muscle memory, but perhaps the Alpine/Re-Alpine
developers made some changes that I missed.
In short, if I want to reply just to the list, I press 'R', 'Y',
'Y' and
the To: field is (should be) correct for me to reply to the list.
Similarly, if I want to reply to the original poster directly, I press
'R', 'Y', 'N', 'N'.
When I press 'R' to reply in Re-Alpine, these are the prompts I get for
cctalk:
Include original message in Reply (using "> ")?
'Y'
Use "Reply-To:" address instead of "From:" address?
'Y'
To : "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
--OR-- (I think this depends on the original poster's client sending a Reply-To:
header?)
To : originial.poster at example.com, "General Discussion: On-Topic and
Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
'N'
Reply to all recipients?
'Y'
To : Original Poster <originial.poster at example.com>
Cc : "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
'N'
To : Original Poster <originial.poster at example.com>
9:53 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Jay West once stated:
Oh hell. I sure didn't mean to open up that can of
worms (the every year or
so debate on if replies should be to the list or to the poster). But since
it HAS been brought up....
Background for short-timers: There is a recurring debate every year or so as
to the reply-to headers setting on the list. The way it works now, when the
list sends out list traffic/posts to each of you, it "munges" the reply-to
header so that when you hit "reply" to a list post, the reply goes to the
list. If you want to just reply to the poster directly (off-list), you have
to go through gyrations like hitting forward and typing in the senders email
address.
Taking off my list owner hat... the following is my own personal opinion on
the topic which shall not be dictated upon the rest:
I think that's insane, not to mention that I suspect it violates some RFC's
Nope. Section 4.4.3 of RFC-822 specifically allows munging of the
Reply-To header.
Personally, I fall into the "Reply-To munging okay" camp. Where's what I
wrote about this topic when it reared its head over fourteen years ago:
http://boston.conman.org/2000/02/03
-spc (So the topic itself fits within the 10 year rule 8-P
3482
days inactive
3483
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
matt＠9track.net -
spc＠conman.org -
tothwolf＠concentric.net