Re: Mailman [ Was: can i have full alpha channel at client side? ]

[Charles Schmidt <cschmidt2 emich edu>]

On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 10:53, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
> weasel wrote:
> > Paul Pogonyshev wrote:
> >
> > Unfortunatly the way the list is setup, if you click on Reply it 
> > addresses the person directly.  If you click Reply All then it again 
> > addresses the person directly and CCs the list.  Its very 
> > counter-intuative for a mailing list to work this way, but it seems that 
> > the GTK list are all like this and they like things this way.  I pointed 
> > this out before, because there are lots of down sides to this, one of 
> > which is that alot of people simply click on Reply and their wisdom is 
> > forever lost to the list, because the email is sent directly to the 
> > person who composed the original email.  This results in lots of 
> > questions being asked over and over again because the answer doesnt 
> > exist in the archives...only the questions.
> >
> > Does anyone know why this is the default behavior?  Generally when I 
> > reply to something in on a mailing list, I want the entire list to see 
> > it.  Since the person that sent the email is generally subscribed to the 
> > list their is no reason to send it to both that person and the list.  So 
> > I have to click on Reply All and then remove the personal address, and 
> > copy the mailing list address from CC to TO.  Thats alot of work, just 
> > to make sure that someone doesnt get duplicate email.  I guess this is 
> > why questions alway get 2 replies, because it just easier to click on 
> > Reply All and let the person who is being replied to (often not the 
> > person who needs to see it) deal with the extra email.
>
> Wow,
>     you raise some interresting points, although this doesnt directly
> interfere with anyones work AFAIK; I'd still like to second that
> motion. As a result, I "reply-all" to virtualy every email I reply to
> (sometimes this results in, god forbid, "UNDEFINED BEHAVIOUR" ;-).
>
> I dont think its correct to say that everyone "likes it this way",
> (I cant seem to think of any advantages to this functionality)
> but rather everyone "has better things to do than configure mailman"
>
> Anywho, [ As I reply-all to this mail ], my two cents,
>
>                 -Tristan

To "solve" this (that is, make hitting Reply only reply to the list)
you're suggesting munging the headers of the original email, setting the
Reply-To: to the list address.

This is awful idea (despite what you think, and despite how clean and
perfect a solution it is) because it modifies the email.  This is a
horrible sin in email handling, imho. 
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

If you munge the headers, how do you reply to just the author?  You
probably can't anymore, without some cut and paste.  If you munge the
headers, hitting the Reply button now may produce unexpected behavior. 
The Reply button is expected to send a reply to the sender of an email. 
Munging the headers will change this so that, effectively, it sends an
email to one of the recipients, which seems completely backward in my
mind 

So, at least to me, the obvious solution is to use Evolution's (and
probably many other email client's) Action->Reply to List button to
reply to mailing lists.

-charlie