Vince Sabio wrote, still not directing replies where he says he wants them,
| Rather than decry one or the other, why not just leave it up to the users?
Why not leave it up to the user, singular?
I'm on one list where, in its second week, the listowner gave in to a cadre
of newbies who admittedly understood neither the concept of group-replying
nor, for some of them, even the idea of a private reply to a post, and who
whined that they didn't know how to get the list's address into their mailers
when they wanted to respond publicly; if they were to start a fresh message
to the list, then they didn't know how to quote the article to which they
were responding. So he reconfigured it to clobber Reply-To:. That list is
loaded to this day with misaddressed private messages and with follow-up
apologies for them. If that's not a problem on Mac-L, hurray for Mac-L.
But on that list, leaving it up to the users was not a good idea. Hitler
first got into political office on a fair vote in a free election.
While (as those who know me would expect) I have procmail strip out the
offending Reply-To: on my subscription copies of that list's posts, I receive
it on two ISPs so that I can post from either address and so that if either
is down I can still receive that list. One of the ISPs, however, has flaky
NFS, and my mail folders there frequently get hosed, so my .forward stashes
mail in the spool with "\dattier" as well as piping to procmail. Of course,
the backup copy in my mail spool has the munged Reply-To: unchanged.
Now, my mistake is keeping two differing versions. Last week I replied to
my spool copy, thinking it was my folder copy, and wrote to the list instead
of the previous author. I realized it a moment later, and fortunately the
content was of arguable public interest, so there was no embarrassment.
The damage was negligible, but still, if I could have set my own subscription
to unmunged, it would not have happened.
Another problem with Reply-To: clobbering on that list: there is one frequent
poster to whom I cannot write privately. Both his From: address and the
address in his .signature bounce. If he includes a Reply-To: with a working
address, I never see it because the list removes it. Thus whenever I have
anything to say to him, I must share it with the whole list. If he has yet
another address, I can't ask him for it without asking the rest of the list
to listen to the question.
If he does use a Reply-To: line, and I could set my own subscription to un-
munged, I'd be able to see it and use it.
(There is absolutely NO rationalization for stripping out a Reply-To: address
supplied by the poster. Rename it if you insist on forcing Reply-To: to the
list, but do not remove it.)
One last thing, Vince: if you had pointed Reply-To: back to this list on your
own posts, then all the supporting private responses that you wish were pub-
lic would have been posted publicly, yet most of the disagreeing private re-
sponses would still have been private.
