Help with GDM.

[Jan Groenewald]

Hi Jane

On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 04:11:55PM +0200, Jane Weideman wrote:
> FYI. I have put this setting back to the default, as I am told this is
> impolite and uncustomary...
Yes, so the hardcore say. There are arguments for and against, but the
technical arguments against munging headers are convincing.

However, for the list which I run for newbies, this is actually
ridiculous -- no one replies to the list. So I think there are some
exceptions.

This is from the mailman administrative interface:
   reply_goes_to_list (general): Where are replies to list messages
   directed? Poster is strongly recommended for most mailing lists.

   This option controls what Mailman does to the Reply-To: header in
   messages flowing through this mailing list. When set to Poster, no
   Reply-To: header is added by Mailman, although if one is present in the
   original message, it is not stripped. Setting this value to either This
   list or Explicit address causes Mailman to insert a specific Reply-To:
   header in all messages, overriding the header in the original message if
   necessary (Explicit address inserts the value of reply_to_address).

   There are many reasons not to introduce or override the Reply-To:
   header. One is that some posters depend on their own Reply-To: settings
   to convey their valid return address. Another is that modifying
   Reply-To: makes it much more difficult to send private replies. See
   `Reply-To' Munging Considered Harmful for a general discussion of this
   issue. See Reply-To Munging Considered Useful for a dissenting opinion.

   Some mailing lists have restricted posting privileges, with a parallel
   list devoted to discussions. Examples are `patches' or `checkin' lists,
   where software changes are posted by a revision control system, but
   discussion about the changes occurs on a developers mailing list. To
   support these types of mailing lists, select Explicit address and set
   the Reply-To: address below to point to the parallel list.

There are some links in that, showing both sides:
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
http://www.metasystema.org/essays/reply-to-useful.mhtml

cheers,
Jan

PS. Almost sent that to you. Now that is my fault for using reply
instead of list-reply. But lots of tech lists I am on make this a little
easier by munging the headers. Only because that is what this email is
about, did I actually notice!

-- 
   .~.
   /V\     Jan Groenewald
  /( )\    www.aims.ac.za
  ^^-^^