[ On Mon, January 19, 1998 at 09:44:33 (+0000), Philip Hazel wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [EXIM] OK here goes...
>
> On Fri, 16 Jan 1998, Peter Radcliffe wrote:
>
> > [I read the list, I don't need to be Cc:ed list mail, ta]
>
> OK, but I'm afraid I am not able to remember everybody's wishes in this
> respect, expecially in the heat of answering n messages per day, so
> forgive me if I don't always get it right. [There is a heated debate
> raging on another list about the use of "Reply-To" in this regard.]
When I know the participants in a thread are all on the list I'll send
the message only to the list.
I try to remember if people are on the list, but of course this only
works for small lists where all participants are regularly active.
Of course for those lists which require you to be a subscriber in order
to post the problem is easy to solve, and perhaps the list server
software *should* (re)set the "Reply-To:" header to go only to the list
since there's never any reason to CC the sender. BUT, this clearly can
violate the user's wishes if they only want personal replies and no CCs
to the list.
Since Exim's list handler is currently polluting the messages posted to
it in several ways (eg. the horrid "[EXIM]" in the subject, and the only
slightly less horrid pseudo-signature on the tail), perhaps the poster's
subscription status could also be included in the message so that the
person sending the reply can set the destination appropriately.
Of course normally, i.e. if everyone lived up to RFC-822's expectations,
the original sender should be setting the "Reply-To:" as appropriate for
their own situation (eg. if you don't want to see a CC, then you should
set the reply to go just to the list, as I'm doing with this message).
Having thought about this problem for some time I think I've settled on
the solution of promoting a MUA solution that involves having the user
identify to the MUA which mail is from a list they subscribe to, and to
have the normall "reply" or "followup" function to reply to the list by
default. Then it'll just be a matter of training users not to use the
"reply-all" function unless the *really* mean it. This is trivial to do
as a user extension for my own mailer, but probably not so easy for
others, and probably impossible for semi-commercial ones like Netscape.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 443-1734 VE3TCP <gwoods@???> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
--
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