[rescue] wrong list?

Greg A. Woods woods at weird.com
Wed Apr 3 13:27:03 CST 2002


[ On Wednesday, April 3, 2002 at 04:02:12 (-0500), Brian Hechinger wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] wrong list?
>
> why?  bill has mailman munge Reply-To: and mutt handles it quite well.  it
> gives me the choice of replying to the list OR to the poster.  works very
> well.  and there is no reason why the MLN can't help out.  it doesn't need
> to be the sole responsability of the MUA.

If the MLM helps out then it shouldn't be via reply-to because that
kills any and all possibility of the poster also having a say in things.
(at least given the current state of RFC 2822 and most MUAs, i.e. all
the ones not supporting Mail-{reply,followup}-To:).

Read the links I posted (and search for DJB's discussions via google,
etc.) for more info about why....  If you don't believe what DJB says
then please at least consider what Keith Moore has to say -- after all
they're usually at each other's throats about thes things, and at least
they both pretty much agree on what the problem is in this case.

FYI the working kink to "reply-to Munging Considered Harmful" is:

	http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

I think Mail-{reply,followup}-To: can only be a viable solution if MLM
implementers and managers can agree to leave them alone!  :-)

There is one situation where everyone can have their way, but it
involves users choosing to use MUAs that can properly parse some of the
more esoteric syntax of RFC-2822 addresses.  That's using the "group"
phrase to describe what a given address in the reply-to field is
intended for.

Eg. if an MLM manager wants to encourage replies to the list then
instead of changing (i.e. clobbering) and existing reply-to header, just
add the add an additional address using a group-name phrase like this to
it:

	reply-to-list:list-injection-addr at listhost.domain;

or even with just a comment phrase like this:

	(reply to the list) list-injection-addr at listhost.domain

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>



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