Re: Broken Reply Function

[Peter Flynn <peter silmaril ie>]

Yaakov Nemoy wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> Is it just me, or is the reply function 'broken' in this list?

Yes, it's deliberate. By virtue of a deliberate misunderstanding and 
grotesque Luddism many years ago by a small coterie of individuals, it 
was decided that it was better to recommend that users use the one or 
two (now obscure) mailers which distinguish reply-to-list from 
reply-to-individual, than to try to understand the problem. A true tale 
of political correctness run wild among people who will never know better.

> Namely, I click reply, and the To field is set as the sender, and not
> the mailing list.  Maybe I'm not as versed in these elite programs
> that can automagically figure out who to send the reply to, but seeing
> how I'm using Gmail, which should fill up some level of a quota for
> uberness,  which certainly doesn't have a 'reply to mailing list'
> function, it still seems a little odd.

The politically correct line is that you should not use a broken mail 
program (defined as one which cannot distinguish reply-to-individual 
from reply-to-list). While I have great sympathy with this view (people 
who use broken mail programs cause an enormous amount of trouble for me 
and others without knowing it), the ruling on munging reply-to is based 
on flawed logic and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of 
mailing lists.

But it's too late to fix it, and it will not change. You just have to 
get used to it, or change your mailer, I'm afraid.

///Peter