Re: mailing-list reply-to

[Isaac Dupree]

On 04/23/10 20:23, Kevin Hunter wrote:
> At 1:33pm -0400 Fri, 23 Apr 2010, Electuur Electuur wrote:
> > I forgot to CC address@hidden in my answer to Michael Evans.
>
> I believe the list owner could make this easier by having the list put
> itself in the Reply-To email header via the reply setting on the Mailman
> administrative interface ([General Options]):
>
> "Where are replies to list messages directed? Poster is strongly
> recommended for most mailing lists."
>    ->  "This List"

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

(which has not stopped it from being debated endlessly in following 
years... there may be a more recent summary, though little has changed 
since then except a few mail clients became slightly better)

To summarize:
- it's easy to learn to do "reply to list" too, and little/no harm has 
been done when you realize you didn't send to the list. (or "reply to 
all" in mail clients that don't offer reply to list. For example, 
Thunderbird offers Ctrl-Shift-R)
- when people accidentally send a private reply to a public list, it is 
bad. And even experienced people are likely to do that by accident.
- technologically speaking, it destroys a piece of information the e-mail.
- etc.

In fact, oddly, grub-devel does reply-to munging as you suggest -- 
unlike every other of the two-dozen technical/free-software mailing 
lists I am on.  I can survive either, but I think it makes sense to fall 
into step with the rest of the free-software world. (a.k.a., for 
help-grub, no change.)

-Isaac