[LINK] Maintaining the link list - Default address replies go to

[Robin Whittle]

At present, the list messages arrive at members' accounts with the
"From: " line referring to the original author.

I support what Craig Sanders wrote and absolutely support the
continuation of this, since the default behaviour, resulting from
clicking the Reply button, is to send a message to that person, and
not to the list.

The dangers of accidentally blasting out to the list a message which
was actually intended for an individual are so great that it is worth
making it a little less convenient for people who actually want to
reply to the list. They need to use the "Reply to All" button instead.

  - Robin



On 21/02/2011 12:35 PM, Craig Sanders wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 11:45:39AM +1100, Birch, Jim wrote:
>> 2.  I'd like to see the primary reply address as the link list with
>> other authors available via reply to all.
> 
> this is what's known as "Reply-To: munging".  It causes far more
> problems than it "solves".
> 
> http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/reply-to-harmful.html
> http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html
> 
> in short, it:
> 
>  - destroys the ability of the author of a post to set their
>    preferred Reply-To address, potentially making it *impossible* to
>    send them a private reply. (see comments on relevant IETF RCSs below)
> 
>  - maximises potential harm from a reply.  a public reply that
>    is accidentally sent privately is no big deal - just send it again 
>    to the list.   no harm done.
> 
>    OTOH, a confidential or sensitive reply accidentally sent to a list
>    could be disastrous for the sender (and/or the "intended" recipient) -
>    and there's no way to send it.
> 
>    setting Reply-To to point to the list makes that potential for
>    disaster the default behaviour.
> 
>  - doesn't even "solve" any problems because there aren't any email
>    clients left that don't have a Reply as well as a Group-Reply or
>    List-Reply button.
> 
>    BTW, some mail clients have both a Group-Reply aka Reply-To-All
>    button (which addresses the reply to every address in the To/From/CC
>    headers), and a List-Reply button (which uses the List-Post: header).
> 
>    mutt, for example, uses the l key for list-reply and the g key for
>    group-reply. and the r key for reply.
> 
> 
> Relevant IETF RFCs:
> 
> see RFC-2822. the mention of Reply-To in this RFC (which
> replaces/obsoletes the much older RFC-822) clears up any ambiguity about
> the purpose of the Reply-To header by clearly stating that it is for the
> use of the AUTHOR of a message.
> 
> RFC-2369 documents email headers for mailing lists, including the
> List-Post: header.
> 
> Mailman supports RFC 2369. in fact, it was one of the first MLMs to do
> so.
> 
> 
> craig