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

[Martin Langhoff]

2008/7/2 Dennis Gilmore <dennis at ausil.us>:
> by setting the replyto the list i wont get ccd on email when people reply to
> all  because that is the easy way to make sure it goes back to the list in the
> current setup.  instead I will get responses via mailmain and not direct and
> the mail will have the X-BeenThere header and will be filed appropriately on my
> mail server.

Dennis is arguing for munging the reply-to. Munging the reply-to
breaks _lots_ of things to fix one little thing that has a better fix.

The harmful link that Wad posted (
www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html ) summarises my concerns. In
terms of the one little thing that Dennis mentions, it can be fixed in
various ways:

 - gmail fixes it with no effort from the end-user

 - mailman has a per-user setting that tries to avoid redundant CCs if
it spots your email address in the To: line

 - procmail's "no dups" filters can fix it for you too

One of the funny effects of this is that many people that argue for
munging reply-to headers completely lose track of discussions they are
part of when they don't get the CC that they so strenously claim that
bothers them. That extra CC is a _feature_.

cheers,


m
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