Re: [Evolution-hackers] Nor “Answer to list”, nor “answer to all” make use of “Cc” …add “wide answer”?

["Garreau\, Alexandre" <galex-713 galex-713 eu>]

On 2018-05-29 at 10:06, Milan Crha wrote:
> By the way, this particular question belongs to evolution-list, rather
> than to evolution-hackers. The later is for coders, while you are
> discussing user functions. Not a big deal, just saying.

Should we cross-post to evolution-list, then stop posting here, so that
to move to a more appropriated place the current discussion, if it
sounds more constructive to you than it may bother you?

> is a nonsense (I'm sorry, I'd use a softer term if I knew such)

Maybe it’s because I’m not fluent, used or familiar enough with english,
but that term doesn’t sound “hard” or harsh in any way to me, it’s just
descriptive, though quite general (or unclear).

> Yours "writing privately to the list" is a nonsense […], the mailing
> list is a public place, not private.

I knew many private mailing lists, where you had to ask to their owners
to be added (this was particularely true for companies, political
parties, etc.), and sometimes a collaborator where suggested to send a
proposition to that private mailing list from the outside, and then the
more active people on the mailing list would reply, and cc the mailing
list so less active people could see the discussion, and eventually try
to participate later, while the outsiders would receive all the mail
directed to them, and eventually see exchanges between several
subscribed parties who found appropriated to cc them in their subsequent
interpersonal exchanges.

The same way, as public archives may not always be accessible or easy to
find, link, use or read, and as not subscribed people may participate,
it may make sense (or at least be possible) to take parts of the
conversation only between lists subscribers, without involving not
subscribed people.

For instance let’s say some newbie, let’s say an easily worriable one or
a really busy employee, that one may want not to bother with highly
technical or stressfull discussion, asks some high-level question that
has deep non-technical implications to a technical mailing list with a
lot hackers and such, some of them may want talk about some stuff
without having to explain them, without to bother the newbie, and while
still allowing subscribers interested in learning to read, then first
not adding the aforementioned newbie to the recipients headers, discuss,
and then the idea has been deemed valuable to report to the former
questioner, answer them what has been discussed while explaining not
more than what has been deemed necessary to use for their problem.

This is a bit complex case and may not happen that often, although
I may guess it may happen with people with complex enough usage of mails
or inside political parties.

> I do not know what your use case or work flow is that you
> notice messages where you are in To/Cc better than messages directed
> only to the list where you are subscribed (I'd guess as long as they
> are directed to the list too they end at the same folder), but okay.

I split and sort my mail according the List-Id header.  When a mail
comes from a mailing list, I have a lisp function that reverse, cut (the
tld), simplify (remove really redundant qualifiers such as “discuss”,
“readers”, “users”, “infos”, “news” and “list”), deduplicate (uniq), add
“lists”, and join with “.” so that that for instance your answer will
arrive in the “lists.gnome.evolution.hacker” group and one from
evolution-list will arrive in the “lists.gnome.evolution” group (that
means the directory “~/mail/lists/gnome/evolution” in nnml format, also
works with nnmh “MH” and nnspool ones, as aforementioned [1]).

> That only proves that different people have different habits and use
> cases. To be honest, I hate when people reply to all in the lists. It
> breaks reply to the list, because I receive messages directed only to
> the list (when I'm not in To/CC, there's a setting in mailman for it,
> which avoids duplicate mails), that means that reply to all makes
> things worse for someone.

I didn’t understand… you receive the message then, right? and even only
once (this is interesting as yesterday I did ask to mailman hackers
about an optional (configurable at subscription) functionality)?

> It makes sense to reply to the list, it's the place where the thread
> begun, thus it should stay there, in the public.

Sometimes it makes sense answering in private not to bother the list
with little personnal off-topic.

> As Ángel said, if you are not subscribed, then you can say so and
> people will keep you in the loop. Doing it "only because you can" (like
> by adding such notice into your signature regardless of actual state)
> might not be ideal. Again, different people, different habits,
> different preferences.

Sad these are non-standard, nor have we standards to differentiate and
equally adapt to and treat them :/

> People using reply-to-all, because either they
> do not know reply-to-list or their mail client doesn't offer it to them
> is no argument to keep using reply-to-all, just the opposite.

I have both private-reply (gnus-summary-reply), reply-to-list
(gnus-summary-reply-to-list), *and* reply-to-all
(gnus-summary-wide-reply).  Though contrarily to Evolution, the later
differentiate between “To:” and “Cc:” header (Evolution puts everything
in “To:”, which I consider equally fine, but with different semantics,
and really well suited for the name “reply to all”), put the address
that were in the “From:” in the “To:”, and all the rest (that were in
the “To:”, “Cc:” and “Bcc:”) in the “Cc:”.  It (also, I guess) uses
List-Post for reply-to-list.  Maybe I’ll propose an addition of a
“gnus-summary-reply-to-all” command, similar to Evolution’s
“reply-to-all”.

> Back to the matter, Edit->Preferences->Composer Preferences->General
> tab->[x] Group Reply goes only to mailing list, if possible. That's
> probably the option you are looking for. With that off the Ctrl+L still
> goes to the list only, but the Group Reply goes to all.

What’s the difference between Group Reply, Reply to all and Reply to
list then? I didn’t find any “group reply” command in the contextual
menu, nor did I understand (even by testing) what does that checkbox
changes…  Only at the end of composing this mail I found out it was in
tool bar, what a good example of how noise can alter how you may (not)
see enormous things.

> For me, there's Reply to Sender, Reply to All, Reply to List, Group
> Reply and now also Alternative Reply.

Alternative Reply?

> Adding another reply kind, maybe with a short cut, especially in a
> world where there's a tendency to make things simpler, rather than
> more complicated (there are complaints that Evolution it already too
> complicated, you repeated that several times too), could not add to
> the thing.

“Complicated” doesn’t mean complete, complex or big, and “Evolution” may
metonymically refers to its UI as well.  That “complicated” impression
comes from the fact the UI is *really* full of noise, because research
bar is never hidden and not integrated to the tool-bar, because tool-bar
is complex as well as redundant with nearly all contextual-menu
facilities (and semantics), because headers are quite difficult to read,
and because you always simultaneously have in sight the buttons for the
other non-mail groupware functions of Evolution, the mailboxes tree, the
threads tree, and the message content view.  But I’d say, related to
most of other MUAs (which have anyway nearly all a really complicated
user-interface (which sadly makes people prefers other messaging systems
to mail :( (such as facebook, SaaSS, social networks and proprietary
mobile apps))), main “complicated”-feeling comes from how is the
tool-bar, and the groupware buttons (thunderbird is almost the same
(except groupware), and gmail doesn’t really have a menu/tool-bar but
rather something hybrid and, rightly, more deeply nested in the UI tree,
so it may mask more easily (you don’t see it when you didn’t selected a
group/mailbox and then don’t see the thread-view)).

However, adding another functionality doesn’t mean to make it pollute
the “default-ish” UI everybody sees and uses all the time. It may be a
feature that may be added or configured later, as well as something
depending on some setting/header (like a mailing-list header saying such
or such behavior is prefered).  I came here rather to discuss about the
semantical benefits of adding senders to “To” while keeping the
mailing-list in “Cc”, and potentially letting user-agents (or even
mailing-list or MTA softwares) manage how not to make this unpractical
(I suggested deduplication using Message-Id, List-Id and List-Post).

> I also do not understand how you'd recognize when to use
> reply-to-all instead of reply-to-list-and- From. There can be people
> in the To/CC whom are not subscribed to the list, thus you'd just
> remove them from the loop, which is wrong (I know, you wanted to reply
> to the list and the To addresses, but that's not correct, because the
> To can be the mailing list and all the other people in the loop could
> be in CC, while you are replying to the person in the From header).

Mailing-list address can be differentiated from the others by matching
the List-Post header.

Actually, in the nearly-always-in-sight UI (that is always seeable when
you’re viewing a message, but not like in a menu (submenu, contextual
menu, menu bar: tool-bar is a good candidate), I’d expect a “big
friendly default button” semantically representing the “correct standard
default action to do in context”, that would be, inside a mailing-list
(that is when you got “List-Post” and “List-Id” headers in messages), be
a “Reply to list” (or rather “Continue conversaton”) button (with that
(one of these) name(s), so you understand it does something different,
yet it’s normal because you *should* do something different) that puts
the mailing-list address (what’s in the List-Post header) in the “To:”
and [2] everybody else (in the “From:”, “To:”, “Cc:” and “Bcc:” headers)
in “Cc:”.

Then another one, whose you can see after its representation in UI, is
of less importance (like in contextual menu and tool bar you would put
it afterwards, or in a submenu), “Reply to sender” that would put the
emitter (the one(s) in the “From:” header) in the “To:” and the mailing
list address (the one from “List-Post:” header) as well as [2] everybody
else (from the “To:”, “Cc:” and “Bcc:” headers) in the “Cc:” header.

And *then*, by a shortcut, a submenu, really-afterwards entry in
contextual menu, or any really of guessable-by-representation less
important place, a “reply privately”, that, again, you may even not let
exist or configure out.  This is a special case, not everyone will
encounter, and *any user* (especially if researching to do a such thing)
will be the ability to remove choosed addresses from the headers in
composer (while the reverse won’t be true).

Then, and that’s optional, in a submenu, you may have (in submenus, menu
bar, even later in contextual menu or even submenu) some “reply to all”
that would put just everybody in the “To:”, because I think that may
convey a meaning (any mail that would beginn with “hey I’m speaking to
you all now”).

I still didn’t understand what does “group reply”, why does it have a
changing meaning (position, role and importance may change, but I’m
beginning to think maybe it’s really counterintuitive anything that
fully changes behavior without changing name), and why it’s there.

[1] <4rozuv3j6ejn xff xxuns g6 gal galex-713 eu>
[2] but you may configure that later out if you prefer