[sclug] Reply-to: sclug?

[Alex Butcher]

On Sun, 6 Feb 2005, Roland Turner (SCLUG) wrote:

> John Stumbles wrote:
>> Having yet again cluelessly replied to the sender of a message rather
>> than the list can I suggest/request that whoever maintains this list
>> set  it so that messages from the list have either From: or Reply-to:
>> the list?
>>
>> Or has this been discussed & dismissed before for some reason?
>
>
> I don't know whether this has has been discussed before on this list, but
> it certainly has been at great length on many others!
>
> What you suggest would have the effect of actively breaking correctly
> behaving software for the benefit of careless users and/or those who are
> using antediluvian MUAs/mail-clients.

What MUAs were you thinking of? PINE is almost as old as it gets, and it has
options to reply to all, Reply-To: or From:. If your MUA doesn't have such
options (or it does, but you haven't RTFM'ed) then it needs some hacking.

> This not only breaches the principle of least surprise ("I pressed 'reply
> to sender', not 'reply to list', but it went to the list anyway!") but
> also the "do no harm"/fail-safe principle ("the reason that I didn't want
> the reply to go to the list was because it contained confidential
> information"); it is vastly preferable for carelessly sent email to go to
> too few people than for it to go to too many people. If you really are
> using software so old/broken that it doesn't have seperate
> operations/options for replying to sender, list or all then, seriously,
> upgrade.

As stated above, Reply-To: munging doesn't break any of those options on
reasonable MUAs (e.g. PINE).

This is a holy war, though, so I'll just point at
<http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html> and
<http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml>. I'm firmly in the
'Reply-To: Munging considered useful (for *discussion* lists)' camp. It seems
to me that the 'considered harmful' argument basically boils down to 'But I
might be rude AND/OR incompetent and I don't want to have to face the
consequences', whereas I've *observed* every type of behaviour described in
the 'considered useful' essay on this list, compared with the Bristol & Bath
LUG list which does munge Reply-To:. I'll especially note that the BBLUG
list is much more conversational and lively than the SCLUG list.

Additionally, from time to time, I get complaints from folks who don't like
the fact that I usually lazily hit 'reply to all' on unmunged lists
resulting in them getting two copies. I can't be bothered to remember who
cares and who doesn't so sometimes I forget to manually remove them from the
Cc: list. Munged lists don't have this problem.

In the end, though, I'm happy to enjoy the use of a list run as the list
admin sees fit. :-)

> - Raz

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>