On Sat, Aug 05, 2000 at 10:01:52PM +1000, Tom Massey wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Aug 2000, Simon Bowden wrote:
> > But how is anyone to know if the original sender is subscribed to the list
> > or not? And hence whether or not to include them?
>
> True - it's pretty hard to know, particularly if people are lurking and
> only popping up to send an occasional message. I guess it's not possible
Actually it is fairly trivial. So long as you get some helping from
the person who sends the message.
You seem to be trying to design a system so that you can cater to people
who are subscribed but don't post often. Or who aren't subscribed but
read via the archive.
The simplest thing to do is hit `Reply to All' (or your mail clients
equivalent) if you are responding. If the sender cares to any degree
they will set Reply-To (or the non-standard Mail-Followup-To) to be
either the list, themselves, or the list and themselves.
It isn't worth the time trying to second guess where people want a
response sent. Assume they are intelligent and have set Reply-To
as necessary.
Oh and if you are a sender of email consider: it is far simpler to
change your own behaviour (set Reply-To) than the behavious of
400 other people.
> to send all list mail through a filter that would flag messages as 'sender
> is subscribed/not subscribed to the list'? (Even if possible, I imagine
Yes it is possible.
> it'd be a hassle to set up, and not really worth it). But what I'd say is,
Not only is it not worth it, it gives away who is and who isn't
subscribed to the mailing list. I hate giving away any information I
don't need to.
> if you're not subscribed to the list then stick something in the message
> to let people know to send directly to you (or perhaps disallow
Reply-To does this, see above.
> mail from non-subscribers unless approved by the admin people -
> if this is possible with the current setup, and if admin want
> lots of mail to be approved in their in boxes ;-).
No thanks. It is well over 100 messages a day. More would be unwelcome
unless there are others willing to be list-admins.
> Anyway, is there a lot
> of mail from people not subscribed? And of the mail from people who aren't
> subscribed, how much needs a reply anyway - things like announcements
> which may not come from subscribers have all the info you need in them
> anyway. And it really isn't necessary to respond to Japanese spam, unless
> you have an amusing way of using Perl to translate it into a series of
> rude words. ;-)
If anyone is getting spam please let us know - we catch about 5 or 6 a
week now. As best I know we've only let one thru so far.
> > Maybe something more like if you know they are a subscriber, then only
> > send to slug, otherwise, better to play safe.
>
> Yeah, I understand what you're saying, and it does make sense. In response
> though, IMHO it's only good manners to be subscribed to a list before
> you post to it. Kind of like the difference between shouting
On a discussion list, that is true. HOwevere I often sed bug reports to
development list to which I don't have the time to subscribe to.
> you. There's probably an RFC that mentions subscribing to lists before
> posting to them, it seems like the sort of thing that would be in there
> somewhere.
RFC1855 I think.
> - I still can see no reason for posting outside the list without the
> request of a sender to the list (particularly not for posting the same
> response to both the list and the original sender).
The original sender should have the courtesy to indicate where they want
responses to go. If they don't then I let it go where ever my `reply to
all' calculates it should go.
Anand
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
