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[Przemysław Kulczycki]

Barry Warsaw pisze:
> On Feb 29, 2008, at 1:34 PM, PrzemysBaw Kulczycki wrote:
> 
>> The purpose of the mailing lists is to discuss things _on the  
>> mailing lists_, so a default Reply-to header is *mandatory*.
>> This header could be unwanted only on announce lists.
> 
>> Besides, this situation repeats on other lists, so I've mailed the mailman at l.u.c 
>>  address, so the mailman admin will change the default setup for new  
>> lists and modify the setup of others.
> 
> This will not fix the problem, it will only shift the complaints to  
> ones of "I meant to reply to so-and-so privately, but it went to the  
> whole list.  Please delete my credit card number from your archive  
> (and every mirrored copy of my message all over the world)!"
> 
> In other words: you cannot win.
> 
> The Mailman community well understands the arguments both for and  
> against reply-to munging.  Links were given to the seminal articles  
> supporting both points of view.  The Mailman project's official  
> position is to strongly discourage reply-to munging but recognizes  
> that some list administrators may still "want" to enable it, so it  
> makes it an option, though not the default.
> 
> In my opinion, reply-to munging is almost never appropriate.  The only  
> hope you have is to teach users the difference between the Reply and  
> Reply All buttons, and steer them toward mail readers that support  
> these two mechanisms.  Sadly, you have to just deal with duplicates or  
> find a mail reader that supports Mail-Followup-To.
>
> http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html
> 
> or use your Mailman settings to suppress the list copy of any message  
> on which you are explicitly CC'd.

Oh come on, every long time mailing list (or usenet group) user expects 
that the default reply goes to the whole list/group.
My today discovery that most Ubuntu MLs are set to do otherwise heavily 
disappointed me.

New users will always complain, they have to see how it works, even if 
it means that they will send to the public something that was meant 
private (and I did the same once 8 years ago - everyone learns on their 
own mistakes). In the current setup they will still complain when they 
press accidentally the Reply-to-all button and send their 
private/embarrasing/rude stuff to the list.
Having every user receive duplicate emails is really worth it? (unless 
the ML is configured to ignore the mail if user is CC'd directly)
Who is more important, the regular users, or the occasional newbies?

Besides, it's not only about duplicates. It's also about lost mails or 
broken threads due to sending a mail to a single address instead of the 
mailing list. Since I've subscribed to more Ubuntu lists few days ago, 
I've received more emails directly instead thru the ML, and half of the 
authors of these mails even didn't realize it. The second half forwarded 
these mails to the mailing lists, where these mails should have landed 
in the beginning. I've just checked my outbox, and saw that I did that 
too. For long time I thought that all my mails go to the mailing list. 
Some of them didn't. And I've resent some of them to the MLs.

So I ask again: what's more important, regularly lost mails, or some 
occasional mails which someone meant to go private?
I think that because of this we're losing much of useful discussion on 
all mailing lists. It also creates confusion when some discussions are 
getting cut in the middle, and then resume after forwarding some mails.

Also note, that the ML welcome messages don't say anything about the 
default reply-to headers (or the lack of).

When you send a mail to a mailing list instead a private mail, you'll 
notice it almost immediately. You'll get your own message (unless you're 
using gmail) or you'll get a reply to it, especially if this message was 
somehow funny or controversial. But if you send a message to a private 
mail you'll never notice it, unless the person will reply to it (but it 
may not, thinking it's just a ML mail), or until you recheck your outbox.

The user receiving the mails will notice such someone else's mistake 
only if he has some message sorting enabled. If he hasn't, he won't. 
Gmail collapses the headers by default. And if he doesn't sort his mails 
in Thunderbird or Evolution he'll just think that this mail is a part of 
the thread on the ML. No one looks at the headers all the time.

That's why all MLs should have a default Reply-to set. And a default 
topic prefix. That will make it easier to notice the above mistakes.

PS: it's weird to discuss mailing lists on the launchpad ML, but there 
is no ML specifically for communication- or ML-issues. If there is a 
better place to discuss it, then tell me.
-- 
## Przemysław Kulczycki <<>> Azrael Nightwalker ##
# jabber: azrael[na]jabster.pl | tlen: azrael29a #
### www: http://reksio.ftj.agh.edu.pl/~azrael/ ###

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