On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 14:24 -0400, Arthur Hagen wrote:
> What's a "list reply"? That's not a standard MUA function, and indeed
> none of the MUAs I use have that. Assuming that it exists on the other
> end is an error.
Most MUAs have Reply or Reply-to-all. That's it.
In my opinion, a "list reply" is one in which someone ensures that a
recipient is the list address. That's a function of the human, not the
MUA, assuming that the human operator of the MUA is skilled and not too
tired/bored/bothered/lazy to check their recipient list before sending
the message.
> No, but there's nowhere else to specify the mailing list address, and it
> has to be specified *somewhere* if you want replies to hit the list at
> all.
Correct. Again, a function of the human.
> When replying to you, I have to change the To: address manually to get
> the reply to go to the list and not you. There's no such problems when
> replying to e.g. Phil Hazel.
That's because Philip (and others) have probably configured their MUA to
send a Reply-To: header to the list, which directs replies to the list
for those subscribers whose MUAs conform to accepted best practice and
comply with that wish.
> Since the problem appears to be people getting emails to the From:
> address when they /haven't/ specified a Reply-To, I would suggest that
> starting to use a Reply-To might alleviate their problem.
Indeed. If the replying recipient's MUA complies with the wishes of the
Reply-To: header - they don't all, and some can get confused if there
are multiple instances or addresses within that header (I forget which,
specifically, but I have come across more than one in the past; most
frequently webmailers). However, if people blindly reply to list posts
without checking their recipient lists (and I still do this occasionally
with various lists) then the misdirection is nobody's fault but theirs.
It isn't the original poster's fault, and it isn't that of the list MLM.
Just the replying sender.
> Oh, and what's the purpose of the GPG signing of your emails, when
> there's no way to reliably obtain your public key? That's just wasting
> people's bandwidth -- anyone can send an email claiming to be for you
> and sign it with a key claiming to be yours.
[graeme@ernie ~]$ gpg --recv-keys 7D61E3E6
gpg: requesting key 7D61E3E6 from hkp server subkeys.pgp.net
gpg: key 7D61E3E6: public key "Magnus Holmgren
<holmgren@???>" imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1
That wasn't hard. Very reliable infrastructure, the PGP keyservers have.
> Other than that, who else here have recently gotten private emails from
> a Rohit Sakalle <rohitsakalle@???>, who apparently disregards the
> list and sends private-only emails to list users requesting "help",
> without it even being a reply to anything (IOW unsolicited requests for
> others to do his job for him)? That's kind of rude -- are there any
> moderators who can take action?
We're all ears. Sadly none of us work for Google, so assuming that the
sender really is using gmail and is sending to private addresses outside
of exim.org, there's nothing we can do. I don't believe that
unsubscribing the person you mention - assuming they are subscribed -
would help the situation one bit.
Graeme
