Inappropriate use of private meetings & lists. (reply to).

[John Watlington]

As not everyone has admin access on mailman.laptop.org, here is the  
text to which JG linked:

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" (http:// 
www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html) for a general discussion of  
this issue. See "Reply-To Munging Considered Useful" (http:// 
www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml) for a dissenting opinion.

wad

On Jul 2, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Jim Gettys wrote:

> Here's mailman's recommendation about replyto...
>
> http://lists.laptop.org/admin/devel/?VARHELP=general/ 
> reply_goes_to_list
>                      - Jim
>
> On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 09:19 +0200, NoiseEHC wrote:
>>>
>>> There are top-down decisions being made by a few people that  
>>> drive the
>>> direction of OLPC. These decisions are not waiting for consensus,  
>>> and
>>> they are made by a small number of people. I don't believe this is
>>> going to change (at least not in the short term).
>>>
>> I, personally, do not care who makes decisions, as long as he is  
>> smart
>> and makes "good" decisions. The problem is that usually I am not
>> notified of such decisions.
>>
>> For example, the move from 32 bit to 16 bit frame buffer just  
>> happened
>> silently. One day people debated its merits on this list without
>> reaching any conclusions. Some months later it was 16 bit. Nobody  
>> told it.
>>
>> A similar thing is that I am trying to get an answer to the question
>> whether the XO image will be moved to LZO compression or not when we
>> will be rebased to F9. The reason is that I am currently tuning  
>> the LZO
>> decompression code and want to know whether this effort is moot or  
>> not.
>> Most likely this was already decided by somebody, and frankly I am  
>> not
>> qualified enough to debate this decision, I just want to know what  
>> it is.
>>
>> Note that I had to reply all to this message and then delete all
>> recipients and then replace CC devel with TO devel. The reason is  
>> that
>> this devel list is not set up that the reply-to would be the devel  
>> list,
>> and if I do not delete others then the conversation often slips  
>> outside
>> devel. See, even the main mailing list is configured wrong.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Devel mailing list
>> Devel at lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> -- 
> Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
> One Laptop Per Child
>
> _______________________________________________
> Devel mailing list
> Devel at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel