[Coco] Question about the reply behavior of this email list

[John W. Linville]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 08:59:36PM -0700, Tony Cappellini wrote:

> I don't think so.
> 
> I belong to close to 10 lists. THIS list is the only one I've ever belonged
> to that has this behaviour.
> It's quite irrirating and it should be configurable by the user as to how it
> should behave.

Perhaps not surprisingly, 'everyone' is both right and wrong on this
thread. :-)

Lots of lists do it each way -- I have no idea where the balance
falls-out.  IIRC, the default for the mailman software is to do it
the way this list does it (by setting "Reply-To:" to point at the
list).  Most "old school" tech-oriented lists (e.g. the Linux kernel
mailing list) do it the "other" way (i.e. not setting "Reply-To:").
Neither way is inherently right or wrong IMHO.

Doing it the "other" way leads to threads going off-list.  YMMV as
to whether this is a big problem, especially w.r.t. OT threads.

Doing it the way this list does it (i.e. setting Reply-To: to point at
the list) leads to people accidentally sending comments to the list
that were intended to be private.  This can lead to some embarassing
moments with unintentionally public insults/ridicule or exposing
private data like mailing addresses and phone numbers (which we have
seen here from time to time).

All things being equal, I'd rather do it the "other" way.  But, my
mail client's configuration is such that "Reply-To:" lists are not
a big problem either -- everyone should use mutt. :-)

Hth!

John

P.S.  One "wrong" way would be for the list to alter the From:
line to point to itself.  I think some list software can do this,
but I hope no one configures them to do so.
-- 
John W. Linville
linville at tuxdriver.com