On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 06:41:17PM -0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote: > On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 06:23:11PM -0600, Derek Martin wrote: > >On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 09:51:08AM -0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote: > >>But the "reason" supplied by the RFC, which I snipped to emphasize, > >>is a bit weak. > > > >I'm not sure why you think that. You, just now, responded to > >something I said. > > I responded to your message, but I replied to mutt-users. That's > the reason for the <list-reply> function, because the primary > recipient was and continues to be the mailing list.
You used Mutt's list-reply feature, which still most mailers don't have. As for the list being the primary recipient, a demonstration to the contrary: Imagine you're standing in a group of people, and someone says something to the group. If you respond to what that person says, do you face that person? I promise you, unless you're neuro-atypical, you most likely do, because it is that person you are primarily addressing; and since it is, it is natural to address them directly. even if it is a group conversation. It's no different if you're participating in a mailing list, except that instead of face-to-face, the conversation is electronic, and your circle of friends doesn't have a Cc: line. The whole reason to have a mailing list: One person asks a question or posts some info, responses are specifically for them, but may be of interest to others. They (the list members) are being kept in the loop. It's automatic Cc:. It's a clever hack to prevent you from having to manually manage the recipient list each time you want to message a group of people which may (or may not) be interested in what you're messaging about. Mutt evolved functionality to deal with this, and a small handful of other mailers copied it. A clever hack on top of a clever hack. Even now, most major mailers don't give you that option--you'd need to use group reply, which would still put the sender to whom you're replying in the To: line, and put the list address in the Cc: line. > If you convert the mailing list concept to a group of "To" > recipients instead, the same logic can apply. A sends an email to > B,C,D as a group conversation, "Where should we have lunch today". > B may respond to A's email, but her desire is to reply equally to > all the other primary (to) recipients. Her group-reply ought to put > A,C,D in the To field. This continues the indication that it's a > group conversation whose primary recipients still include C and D. I think you have that backward--it's the mailing list that has been converted from the traditional method of addressing recipients, as an exceptional case. But sans any list-reply function, replies instantly revert to traditional addressing on all mailers, including those which preserve the To: line. > I believe this pattern of conversation is more common now-a-days, > and that it deserves support in the MUA. It was no less common in the early days of e-mail, and I would imagine it was actually a higher percentage of messages that were used this way, since Internet mail was mostly used by the folks who were creating the Internet, to discuss how to create the Internet... This is not new. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
pgpNBkBsybyHA.pgp
Description: PGP signature
