[Gnu-arch-users] Re: "reply all" etiquette: reply-all vs. reply'ing to list

[Miles Bader]

Matthieu Moy <address@hidden> writes:
> Automatic Reply-To makes personnal replies really difficult to do (in
> most mailers, the only solution would be to copy the address of the
> person you want to reply to, reply, delete the To: field, and paste
> the address), and an unfortunate reply-all is I think _much_ more
> harmfull than an unfortunate single reply.

It doesn't just make personal replies hard, in some cases it makes them
_impossible_, because it overwrites the Reply-To: header; if the
original message already had a Reply-To: header, well, too bad, you
lose!  If you instead change the list manager only _add_ Reply-To:
headers, leaving existing ones in place, you essentially make the entire
(munging) feature useless:  users then can't rely on the "reply" key,
because it may go to either author or list.

Reply-To: munging is a truly dumb idea; as far as I can tell.it was
implemented by people who didn't think about the issue very much, and
had a sufficiently homogeneous user community that they didn't notice
its problems.

-Miles
-- 
80% of success is just showing up.  --Woody Allen