[YLUG] Mailing list

[Ewan Mac Mahon]

On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 12:17:45PM +0100, Noah Slater wrote:
> >But reply-to-all != reply-to-list.
> >
> >The former replies to the sender and the list which
> >usually isn't what I want.
> 
> Any decent mailing list software spots the double reply and leaves the
> original sender out of the list of recipients from the reply. This is
> mailing list dev 101 - all modern lists will do this.
>
They don't because that would a) violate the principle of least surprise
in that one expects mail to the list to go to all subscribers, and b)
break everyone's filtering by not sending a copy with the list headers.

Whether reply-to-list is harmful or not depends on the character of the
list, and importantly whether or not it accepts postings from
non-subscribers. For (e.g.) technical discussion lists both closing the
list and munging reply-to break things like cross-posting and other
non-subscriber participation. For a closed group/club list like this one
all posters are subscribed, so /will/ recieve replies via the list, and
so don't need personal ones as well; and we actively want to encourage
people to keep things on-list. It is massively uncommon to want to make
an off list reply to anything on this particular list, and the munging
doesn't stop you, it just increases the hassle in that tiny minority of
cases, for the considerable benefit of reducing many people's hassle
much of the time.

Ewan

-- 
Other ways to find me:
Jabber: ewan (at) jabber.org.uk   |  MSN: ewanmacmahon (at) hotmail.co.uk
IRC:    ewan on irc.freenode.net  |  GPG: Key ID 0xC28828A4
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/york/attachments/20070517/9d3208b8/attachment.bin