Herbert Fruchtl <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
...
>I would side with the earlier posters in this thread. I subscribe to this
>list not only to hear about others' problems, but also their solutions
>(and other opinions). I can live with a few "I'm on holiday" messages.
That's one of the major problems with the Reply-To: header pointing
to the mailing list. The "I'm on holiday" messages would be sent to
all the recipients of the list for every article posted. Instead, such
messages are now only sent to the author of the article. Unless the
list server is smart enough to recognize and reject such autoresponses
(and *only* those) you can't have Reply-To: be the list.
As for the other objections to Reply-To: being the list, I agree that
there need to be three options for mailing lists. You want to be
able to reply to the list, you want to be able to reply to the author,
and (much more rarely) you want to reply to all (which could include
a set of people not on the list who've been included for the purposes
of a given conversation). My mail tool only gives me convenient
options for reply to all and reply to author (it's spelled that way,
by the way, so if this button automagically sent to the list instead
it would be non-intuitive). If I want the reply-to-list option I must
always select reply-to-all and then delete every adress but the list.
I see no adequate solution to this problem unless some new header
item can be standardized which contains the list's address and
news tools were all rewritten to provide all three options based
on that new header information. No matter what you do with
Reply-To:, there will be one of the three options which is sort of
inconvenient. Short of such a new header, I like the present
rules. If for no other reason, I'm not exactly sure how to reply
to only the author if the Reply-To: address is the list. Do I have
to cut and paste his address from the header information manyally?
--
J. Giles
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