Date   : Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:50:36 +0000
From   : kevin@... (Kevin Bracey)
Subject: Who the message is from...

Rick Murray wrote:
>
> An (ex)Acornite! Hi, welcome!
>   
Yep, pretty ex. Howdy!
>
>  > and it looks perfectly configured to me. So admins - please don't 
> mess with it!
>
> Ooooh, you can tell he's new. :-)
>   
Not really - seen this discussion a few times on mailing lists, and it's 
amusing that it's the first thing I see on this one.. I'm not on many at 
the minute - only three others, and none of them mess around with 
Reply-To (or From as you originally suggested).
> Now, for another point of view. Technical issues and header lines aside, 
> the *LOGICAL* behaviour is to click REPLY to REPLY TO THE MAILING LIST. 
>   
So what is it logical for "Reply to All" to do if "Reply" is replying to 
the list? As I've got two buttons, "Reply" and "Reply to All", I expect 
a "reply" to go to the sender, and "reply to all" to go to everyone who 
received the message.

> As opposed to the current where it is hard to send to the mailing list? 
>   
At a minimum your client should have "Reply to All" - doesn't that work? 
That should pluck the list address out of the "To" field. I suppose if 
there are clients out there that lack "Reply to All" that might explain 
why this keeps coming up.

Are you really in a situation that when you get a message with 
"BBC-Micro" in the subject you're assuming that it's from the list and 
manually typing in the list address to reply? I can see that's 
dangerous, but I'm still not quite sure why you're having to resort to that.

I've just checked, and you're using Thunderbird like me. You've got 
"Reply to All". So what's the problem? Even if your filters are duff, 
using Reply to All will prevent cock-ups.
> A's fault is not knowing Y sent the message privately, thus exposing 
> something to X which was probably best kept secret.
Surely everyone's got filters set up to send list messages to somewhere 
separate from private messages? This is fairly high volume. And if that 
filter can't distinguish between private messages and list messages, 
you're in danger of making a fool of yourself, I guess. You should be 
filtering on the "List Id" header, not just "BBC-Micro" in the subject. 
This is standard mailing-list procedure; it's not safe to filter on the 
subject - and two of my lists don't even distinguish themselves in the 
subject anyway. Maybe that should be advised in the joining message for 
people who aren't used to mailing lists. (They are a bit old-fashioned 
now, I suppose).
> But, then, with Usenet clicking Reply replies to the group. Not privately.
>   
The exact labelling of the buttons will vary, but a Usenet client will 
have two buttons for private and public reply, as well as a New Post button.

A list-aware mail client will offer the same three buttons - it either 
have a manually-configured address for posts and public replies, or will 
use the List-Post address.

A list-unaware mail client won't give you a Post button, but will offer 
you the usual Reply button, going privately, or Reply to All, which will 
go to the list (To) and the sender (From).

Every case has two reply buttons, whatever the labelling - what's so 
hard about that?

If you munge the Reply-To address on a mailing list, you're removing the 
button to reply privately, and you end up with two buttons to reply 
publicly. So you're nobbling mid-to-high-functionality clients for the 
benefit of clients that lack even a "Reply to All" function, but I'm not 
convinced those exist.
> What is wrong with:
>
>    From: Rick <rs@...>
>    Reply-To: <bbc-micro@...>
>   
It overwrites any Reply-To set by Rick.
> If this isn't viable, then what's the point of Reply-To?
Like RFC822 says, it allows you to send e-mails from one account, but 
request that replies go to some other account as well or instead. Not 
unusual - I use it if e-mailing from home but wanting copies of replies 
to come to work. I admit I've never used it on Usenet/mailing lists though.
> Read RFC822, and I will quote, specifically:
>   
... a passage that has been removed from RFC2822 which obsoletes 822. No 
such suggestion appears in RFC2822, and List-Reply has been invented 
since then.
> Oh, and its an RFC, NOT a standard. 
>   
You're right, RFC2822, despite being designated as obsoleting RFC822 
(STD 11), is still only a proposed standard. After 8 years. They don't 
like to rush these things...

But note that RFC822 only suggests that you could use Reply-To for 
mailing lists - it's saying it's possible, not that it's a good idea...

Kevin