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Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Read me first!
|Tue 1998-08-18 Al Gilman <asgilman@access.digex.net> list.faq
||
| > The first two items on that list are quite useful features for lists with
| > newbies on them. However, on lists with more net-savvy members they are
| > often unnecessary. For now I have left the headers unchanged.
|
| The list membership should consider whether the list server
| should set a Reply-to:<list address> or not.
And here are some pointers to that issue from my procmail tips page.
jari
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29.7 Reply-To header
The existence of a Reply-To: means, "IF you reply to me, send it to
this address instead of the one in the From: header."
In the case of a mailing list, the list usually is that default
mailbox. In that case, a Reply-To header says, "don't send it to the
list, send it here instead." Again, it is more a matter of "do what I
mean".
"ListAdmin: Don't play with Reply-To"
... RFC-822 on reply-to is just almost hopeless. The reason
people do what they do is more likely because they saw someone else
doing that, and imagined it was correct, and copied - perhaps slightly
varying things along the way.
...If you use a reasonable mailer, Reply-To munging does not provide
any new functionality. It, in fact, decreases
functionality. Reply-To munging destroys the reply-to-author.
capability.
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
"Reply problems"
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/reply-problem-list.txt
...there are useful things that can be done with these headers. For
instance -- on mailing lists where everyone that posts is assumed to
be subscribed (like this one), the listserv could add a
"Mail-Followup-To: ding@gnus.org" header. It can also be used by the
sender as a way to signal "I am subscribed to the list; don't Cc me or
anybody else".
ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/www/proto/replyto.html
Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu> Wed, 11 Feb 1998 14:20:25 -0500
commented on the nmh list. Keith is the IETF applications area
director, and used to chair the DRUMS working group.
Please don't implement support for Mail-Reply-To and Mail-Followup-To
in nmh. Not only are they nonstandard, they're a poor fix for the
problem.
Reply-To is widely misinterpreted as the replacement for the From
field in replies, in such a way that "reply all" goes to Reply-To + To
+ Cc if Reply-To is present and From + To + CC if no Reply-to field is
present.
RFC 822 has language that appears to support this view. But a careful
reading of RFC 822 reveals that this prose does not apply to Reply-To
with respect to a "reply all" function, but only with the use of
Reply-To in a "reply to author" function.
This leaves us with the situation where the author of a message is
unable to specify the complete destination for replies. Even if the
author specifies a Reply-To field, if the recipient uses "reply all",
addresses from the To and CC field are still included. This is the
behavior implemented by almost every UA in existence, but it's almost
always the wrong thing to do.
And RFC 822's examples make it clear that Reply-To is intended as the
*complete* destination for replies, not merely a replacement for the
From field.
The right way to fix this is to correctly interpret Reply-To - not as
simply the replacement for the From field in replies, but as the reply
destination preferred by the author of the subject message. Adding new
headers doesn't fix the problem. It only makes the situation more
complex.
Dan's proposal is intrinsically flawed. It incorrectly assumes that
the sender can reasonably anticipate the recipient's needs in replying
to the message, and that such needs can reasonably be lumped into
either "reply" or "followup". It doesn't solve the real problem, which
is that responders need to think about where their replies go.
Mail-Followup-To won't decrease the number of messages that go to the
wrong place.
If I sent out a message inviting people to a meeting, and want
"normal" replies (presumably accepting or declining the invitation) to
go to my secretary. Should I put my secretary's address in
"Mail-Reply-To" or "Mail-Followup-To"?
Say I put it in Mail-Reply-To and a responder wants to send a personal
reply to me, perhaps because it's sensitive in nature. So he hits
"reply to author" thinking that the message will go to me. Instead,
the message goes to my secretary. This is Bad.
Say I put my secretary's address in Mail-Followup-To and a responder
wants to send a message to the list of recipients of the original
message -- maybe that responder wants to let everyone know about cheap
airfares to the meeting. So the responder hits "reply to everyone"
thinking that the message will go to everyone. Instead, the message
goes to my secretary. This is not as bad as the other case, but it's
still not desirable.
So if some responses are neither "personal" nor "group" replies, why
not define an extensible reply header that would include not only the
address but the category of reply? Something like:
Labelled-Reply-To: secretary; jeeves@cs.utk.edu Labelled-Reply-To:
mailing-list; listname@foo.com
It turns out that we already have most of this in RFC 822:
o The 'phrase' before an address, or a comment, can identify a
person by name and/or role. The responder can use this information
to decide whether it's reasonable to send a reply to that person.
e.g.
Reply-To: (my secretary) <jeeves@cs.utk.edu>
o Similarly, the 'phrase' before a group name can identify a group
of recipients, which can also be used by the responder. e.g.
Reply-To: Secretary: jeeves@cs.utk.edu ;,
The Gang: a@foo, b@bar, c@zot ;
(Unfortunately, phrases are so widely botched, that they probably
aren't usable for this.)
Summary:
o The way to solve most reply problems is to encourage the responder
to actually think about where the message needs to go, and make it
easy for him to get the behavior he wants. (It also helps if
people use the RFC 822 'phrase' to label their header addresses.)
o We can build interfaces that help the responder do this without
defining any new header fields.
o Except for a very few cases, Mail-{Reply,Followup}-To doesn't
help. It only provides more opportunities for surprising behavior.
Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> 1998-02-12
commented in Emacs ding mailing list
Every mail client is not doing supporting this. Only the badly written
ones fail to distinguish between replies and followups.
When you get right down to it, this proposed standard has two goals:
. To make broken MUAs act less brokenly. Well, broken MUAs are not
going to implement this standard, anyway; good MUAs do not need it
as they already make the distinction between replies and
followups.
. To make broken mailing lists act less brokenly. Administrators of
broken mailing lists have decided that they like it that way. They
claim that it makes it easier for their lists' subscribers to
reply to the list. The subscribers that "need" list-bound Reply-To
headers are using broken MUAs. See #1.
This proposed standard will not solve any of the problems it attempts
to address. It creates headers that are ignored by bad MUAs and are
redundant for good MUAs.
To summarise Keith's statement: From is the originator's mailbox. It
is not an 'account'. RFC 822 states that the originator header should
contain the correct default reply address.
This is the scenario that the proponents of these headers have
proposed, and the flaw the IETF has found with it.
Joe is subscribed to a mailing list that he reads from his "private"
mail account. For whatever reason, Joe posts a message to that list
from work, so his work mailbox is in the From header. Joe does not
want to override where responses go with a Reply-To header, but he
wants personal replies to go to his private mail account insteaed of
his work account.
The flaw the IETF found is that Joe is equating his two mailboxes with
his private and work accounts. There is no such correspondence as far
as RFC 822 is concerned. If Joe is acting in a "private" fashion, the
system he is using is irrelevant; his private mailbox belongs in the
From header and he should put that mailbox there when he originates
the message, regardless of where he physically is when he does so.
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