[sclug] Key signing

[Simon Heywood]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 02:41:48PM -0000, Chris Aitken wrote:
> Is it possbile that there is a default behaviour for MUA's and lists.
> Sometimes Reply (Outlook) replys to sender, sometimes to the list.
> Reply-All often replys to the list (if reply goes to individual), or
> to everyone in the last header.

This is a well known and severe limitation of using mailing lists in
conjunction with common e-mail client software. 'Reply' should always
reply to the sender of the message, and 'Reply to all' should reply to
the other recipients as well. The first is not usually what you want to
do in a mailing list environment, the second happens to work, but not by
design.

Some mailing lists solve this by adding 'Reply-To:' headers to make sure
replies are always directed to the list, but this is a nasty fudge, and
there are strong views on both sides of the argument as to whether or
not it's a good idea. I think recent versions of various mailing list
programs make this a per-subscriber option.

Some mail client software (e.g. Mutt) have a third option, 'Reply to
list', which is exactly what you want. Mutt also adds a header to
messages sent to mailing lists called 'Mail-Followup-To:', to direct
replies to the list only, but it's not a standard header, so it doesn't
solve the problem of people getting multiple copies of e-mails.

The only solution for mail clients without support for mailing lists is
to manually edit the 'To:' line.

S.