On Jul 4, 2012, at 10:17 AM, Franck Martin wrote:

>> 
>> 
>>> On 7/4/2012 7:42 AM, Steve Atkins wrote:
>>>> On a practical level, rewriting the From: to be the list address
>>>> would make it difficult to reply to the author, as their email
>>>> address isn't going to be in any header that the MUA knows what to
>>>> do  with.
>> 
>> If I read the code correctly, the original author's address is added
>> to
>> the Reply-to.  MUA support of reply-to is a bit variable, but
>> generally
>> it is supported.
>> 
>> On the other hand, automatically adding the author's original From:
>> address to an existing Reply-To: field violates the intent of the
>> intended use of Reply-To: as an override of the From: field for
>> replies...
>> 
> 
> Who do you want to reply to? The Poster or the Author? Mailman already 
> overrides the From field by a Reply-to in some cases and one is emotional 
> about it.

On a typical mailing list I will want to reply to either the list or the person 
who wrote the particular mail (by which I mean the email address at which the 
person chooses to receive email). Or both. And ideally, I want to be able to do 
so in a way that is not dependent on the details of which mailing list I'm 
replying to.

I also want to be able to search for mail by a particular person, regardless of 
whether it was private email or via a mailing list. 

I also want different people to appear as different people, even if they're 
sending mail to me via the same mailing list. My current mail client, for 
instance, identifies people via their email address, and will add their name in 
a comment (e.g. will convert '[email protected]' to '"Franck Martin" 
<[email protected]>') based on the friendly from seen in previous mail 
from that email address.

If the mailing list rewrites all From: addresses to "Persons Name" 
<[email protected]>, and the first email I see from the list is from 
"Franck Martin" <[email protected]> then if I try and send new mail to 
just [email protected] my mail client will rewrite that to 'To: "Franck 
Martin" <[email protected]>'. That'd be an unexpected behaviour, and 
confusing. If the first email I see from the list is 'From: 
"[email protected]" <[email protected]>" instead something 
differently confusing is likely to happen.

The default setting on Mail.app is to "Use Smart Addresses". That means that in 
the case of email addresses where there's a "friendly from" only that will be 
displayed, not the actual email address. Whether that's a good idea or not is 
an interesting question, but it's pretty common MUA behaviour. If both 
[email protected] and [email protected] are rendered identically 
(as "Franck Martin") then that's just asking for user confusion.

> But what do you suggest should be done?

Something that doesn't break existing functionality - how that's to be done I'm 
not sure.

But, I do think rewriting email from different people to have the same From: 
address, differentiating between different people just via comments, will cause 
lots of UI problems. That could be avoided by using a different From: address 
in the mailing lists domain for each recipient, perhaps.

Cheers,
  Steve



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