[ale] ALE reply-to changes needed?? -- VOTE @ www.cade.org/ale_reply.php

[Joe]

Jonathan Rickman <jonathan at xcorps.net> writes:

> On 12 Apr 2003, Joe wrote:
> 
> > "ChangingLINKS.com" <x3 at ChangingLINKS.com> writes:
> >
> > > I move that we use the Cade voting system, and close the polls.
> > > Currently the vote is 320 (reply to list) vs. 8 (reply to poster).
> >
> > That's truly bizarre, since it seems to me that the list traffic
> > has weighed pretty heavy on the "reply to poster" side, and
> > there are only about fifteen people who regularly post to the
> > list. Surely the lurking masses don't give two horseapples about
> > this issue; so where the heck did *328* votes come from???
> 
> The 328 lurkers want to make damn sure they get to see the postings of the
> 15 regular posters. The reply to all option sucks, because you end up
> getting multiple copies of the same message when folks forget to trim out
> the original sender(s), which is the case more often than not. If you're
> too busy to keep up with ALE for several days (often the case for me
> lately), it can make a confusing mess out of things as the list traffic
> is pretty high on it's own. Most mailers will allow you to either ignore
> the Reply-To field, or ask you first. So what's the big deal again?

It's really not a big deal by any rational measure. I couldn't
care less, myself, whether the listserver munges Reply-to or not.
I was only wondering who voted 300 times.

However, two thoughts spring to mind:

"Use a different client" is not (IMO) a reasonable response to those
who don't like Reply-to munging. My preferred clients (gnus and
Mozilla) don't AFAIK offer the ability to ignore Reply-to and respond
directly to the OP in the presence of a Reply-to header. People choose
their mail clients for many reasons other than the way they handle
Reply-to, and it's not reasonable to expect them to change clients
*solely* to deal with this silly issue. Then again, it's also not
reasonable to change a list's behavior just to suit one person's
choice of email client.

Secondly, if (as I've been told) the relevant RFCs forbid clients to
ignore Reply-to when responding to messages containing that header
(implying that all the clients that allow this are strictly
noncompliant), then it seems to me that in this respect, the RFCs
suck. (However, having just read the relevant parts of RFC822, it
appears that in fact it *is* permissible for clients to do just about
anything they like; the prohibition against ignoring Reply-to is
merely a recommendation, not a requirement. That implies that it's
really the mail client authors who point to RFC822 as justification
for not including a useful array of reply features who suck :-)

The obvious Right Answer here is to provide the list management
software with a public interface that enables subscribers to choose
how they want their messages delivered: with or without
Reply-to. Seems pretty straightforward; I wonder why it hasn't
happened yet?

Cheers,

-- Joe Knapka
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