Re: [HACKERS] Adding Reply-To: <listname> to Lists configuration ...

Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

> The basic issue is that the current setup encourages
> reply-to-author-and-list, while adding Reply-To encourages
> reply-to-list-only

It also makes it impossible to reply to the author personally. Normally there
are two actions possible on a message, "followup/wide-reply" and "reply" and
MUAs provide separate buttons. Setting reply-to inappropriately essentially
forces both buttons to be "wide-reply".

The suggested behaviour is actually the worst of both worlds since it would
mean "reply" would sometimes send a personal reply to the poster and sometimes
send a wide-reply to the list, depending on whether the poster had already set
reply-to.

Required reading on the subject:

http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

There are proper ways to encourage reply-to-list-only. Set the header:

Mail-Followup-To: <listname>

> Personally: if Reply-To is added to the list headers, I can and will
> reprogram my mail software to ignore it. But I doubt that most
> contributors to the lists have that option.

In fact what they do is ask for MUA features to ignore reply-to headers.
Leading to an escalating weapons race of lists more and more forcefully
breaking MUAs so that MUAs can more and more forcefully break standards in
order to work correctly in the face of broken lists. Compatibility and
standards are collateral damage.

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greg