Date   : Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:03:37 +0000
From   : kevin@... (Kevin Bracey)
Subject: Who the message is from...

Michael Firth wrote:
> The problem with "Reply to All", is that it also replies to the sender 
> of the original message (as I've just done), as well as to the mailing 
> list.
Yes, that is nasty. I've been avoiding it manually by dragging BBC 
MailList from Cc to To...  But fortunately I've just found a proper 
"Reply to List" button - see below.
>
> The problem is that most people will be using pretty dumb clients. Due 
> to Microsoft's dominance of the computing world, a lot of people (me 
> included) will usually be using Microsoft applications for e-mail. A 
> large percentage of the rest will be using Thunderbird, which is also 
> not a "list-aware" mail client (as far as I know).
You're right there - basically e-mail clients have gotten worse/simpler 
over time. So maybe "Reply-to" munging has become more the norm because 
of that. I'm intrigued by the person who said they were on 20 lists and 
this is the only one not munging reply-to. I don't think I've ever been 
on a list that munged reply-to. Mine are all old long-established lists 
though. Clearly some sort of generational thing. (Are all of the 20 
Yahoo Groups or something? I can imagine a service like that being more 
inclined to munge).

>
> Can you give some examples of "list aware" mail clients, and what 
> percentage of Internet mail users use them?
Messenger Pro, which I always used to use when active on mailing lists 
(I've been rather read-only for a while) is fully list-aware.  For 
people using Thunderbird, there is a plug-in which adds a "Reply to 
List" button in the main toolbar.

http://www.juergen-ernst.de/addons/replytolist.html

Seems to work (but relies on the List-Post header and can be defeated if 
you've sent 2 copies with Reply to All, and Thunderbird has suppressed 
the actual list copy).

 From the same author there's a plug-in which also shows "unsubscribe", 
"post" etc buttons in the message header.

http://www.juergen-ernst.de/addons/mailinglistheader.html

Note that the link to the latest version 0.4.0 is broken there. Here's a 
link.

http://www.juergen-ernst.de/addons/download/mailinglistheader-0.4.0.xpi

>
> As a contrasting view to the URL you posted previously, 
> http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.html is an essay suggesting 
> that changing the "Reply-To" header is a good thing.
Certainly there are differing views, and some of them on this list seem 
to be unduly sweary. :)  Amazing to think that people capable of 
programming 6502 assembler can get so frustrated by /anything/ else, to 
be honest!

I still prefer Reply-To not to be munged, but I don't feel that strongly 
about it. But then I've never had to cope with an e-mail client that 
wouldn't co-operate. I can imagine if I had I might feel differently.

Kevin