On 27 Apr 15:41, Noah Slater wrote: > On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 04:19:08PM +0200, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote: > > Noah Slater wrote: > > > Either you avoid Reply-To because it is "harmful" and accept that you > > > will get > > > carbon copies from the commonly implemented group reply function of > > > modern mail > > > clients, or you include the "harmful" Reply-To header and avoid it. > > > > > > What am I missing? This seems too obviously flawed an argument. > > > > Either you add it, which is harmful, or you don't, and people should use > > reply > > to the list when replying to the list. Most (or many) MUAs have a trivial > > way to > > do that, as you already know. So instead of 'replying to all', just 'reply > > to > > the list'. Not too complicated, and you could start to do that with other > > lists too. > > How many MUAs actually have a Reply To List feature? Gmail and most of the > other > online Web mail clients do not have this feature. Microsoft Outlook doesn't, > nor > does Thunderbird by default. So based on this alone, the Debian CoC is > depending > on an uncommon feature for proper behaviour. > > Even if this was a common feature of MUAs, it presents a significant usability > barrier. Most people struggle to use Reply and Reply To All properly, without > the additional cognitive burden of having to remember when they are > specifically > replying to a mailing list. > > You're arguing that a Reply-To header is "harmful" (not that I am convinced) > and
Think of the occasions when you actually do want to do an offlist reply - it's not that uncommon - having Reply-To set to default to the list causes a lot of people to "get it wrong" because they're used to sensible mailing lists that get it right - this happens quite often on one of the mailing lists I'm subscribed to. > so people should learn to use some additional, uncommonly found, feature of > their MUAs to work around the technological problem. I don't buy this argument > at all. Technology should adapt to human behaviour, and not the other way > around. There is something fundamentally wrong when we try to solve a > technical > problem with a Code of Conduct. It's not a technical problem, it's a social problem. Technical solutions to social problems are always wrong. > Without a Reply-To header, we should expect people to Reply To Group. It > doesn't > matter if we have a Code of Conduct, people will always make mistakes. The > only > sensible thing to do in this situation would be to recommend that people who > care properly configure their Mail-Followup-To and Mail-Reply-To headers. I wouldn't expect that. I'd expect that if they usually reply to the list they would configure their MUA to reply to the list. > If Reply To Group is so harmful that we want to avoid it completely, then I > think we should consider adding a Reply-To header to the mailing list emails - > like many other mailing lists do for exactly this reason. Many many more don't add the Reply-To header as it is harmful. > P.S. I had to manually edit the To and CC headers of this email before sending > out because I had forgot to press the L key in mutt, one of the few clients > that > actually has such a feature. So, user error, not software error... -- Brett Parker -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
