On 15.01.2014 09:28, Charles Marcus wrote:
On 2014-01-14 7:46 PM, Kaz Kylheku kaz@kylheku.com wrote:
I know about the "Reply List" thing; I neglected to mention, in fact, that I tried both "Reply All" and manually invoking "Reply List", with identical results.
Look; "Reply All" is obviously doing the right thing now as I post this reply. It's going to you, Arne, and Cc: to the RCU list!
So does that mean that it did, or that it didn't detect a mailing list?
(Is this feature tested only against the RCU list?)
I don't agree with "Reply All" doing a "Reply List" if a mailing list is detected. The proper way to reply to a mailing list is "Reply All". Which means ...
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED FOR A "REPLY LIST" MISFEATURE.
Au contraire... 'Reply-To-List' is extremely important, and extremely useful.
However, I believe that invoking it when 'Reply-All' is used is just plain broken. It should only be invoked when the ordinary 'Reply' is used.
Reply should reply to the sender: the person on the From: line, period.
If Reply turns into Reply List, then the sender will not necessarily receive the reply. He or she will receive the list copy---if he or she is subscribed to the list.
Mailing lists can and some do allow posts from non-subscribers.
Also, mailing list discussions can have one or more non-subscribers in the loop.
For instance, say I fire off a question to some technical list. I could CC: my boss on that. The replies should also CC: to my boss. I may or may not be a subscriber of the list; the boss certainly isn't.
People who don't agree with these productive and reasonable uses of mailing lists are dickheads and I don't want to listen to a single thing I have to say. At least, not until they subscribe to both my ears individually, fill in three catpchas and validate their e-mail.
Reply-All should remain Reply-All.
FOR USERS WHO REALLY WANT THIS, THE BUTTON SHOULD BE CALLED "CLICK HERE TO REPLY IN A MORONIC WAY IF YOU THINK THAT RFC STANDS FOR SOME SORT OF FRIED CHICKEN FRANCHISE".
What is moronic is someone clicking 'Reply-All' on a discussion list and sending duplicate emails to the sender. Reply-To-List solves that problem nicely - for anyone with half a brain that learns how to use it.
This alleged problem is a myth. I've always used Reply All in mailing lists and never ran into this.
The reason is, doh, that anything that can be called a viable mailing list manager squashes duplicates. It pays attention to what is on the To: and Cc: headers, and reconciles that with the distribution list.
GNU Mailman actually makes it a per-user option. If you're on a GNU Mailman list and are getting duplicates: "list copies" as well as direct replies, then turn off the list copies (and ask the maintainer to make the 'off" setting a default for new users).
Any remaining duplicate issues are something weird, like someone using Bcc: so the mailing list robot doesn't know the other recipients. Or bugs in the mailing list manager such as, oh, your registered mail differs in case from the one in the Cc: list, and the software uses a case-sensitive string comparison when looking for dupes.